


Hardcases

by Starwinder042653



Series: Standalone Stories [6]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 08:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18384494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starwinder042653/pseuds/Starwinder042653
Summary: Vin and Ezra are teenagers living on the streets of Denver when Ezra becomes the only person that can identify a killer.





	Hardcases

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted on my website as two parts but I am posting it as a single part here.

*******

"I don't like this," ATF agent Buck Wilmington said, frowning as he looked around the warehouse district they were parked in. 

"It's where Tag said to meet him," Stephen Travis, Team Seven's team leader, reminded him quietly. 

"Ain't like Tag," Wilmington insisted. "Man hates closed in spaces. Ain't nothing more closed in than a warehouse filled with crates stacked to the damned ceiling with just enough space to drive a forklift between them." 

"He said he had something to show you guys," JD Dunne, the youngest member of the team, put in from behind Buck's right shoulder. "Maybe it's inside. That'd explain him wanting to meet here." 

Stephen glanced back at "the kid" as everyone referred to JD. "Exactly. So let's get in there and find out what he's got." 

The Agent in Charge strode confidently towards the personnel door that they were parked near. The loading docks were on the far side of the warehouse. 

Buck followed, more slowly, holding a hand out to his side to keep JD behind him, muttering darkly, "Damned fool! Just walking in." He reached behind him and pulled his piece from its holster in the small of his back. 

JD frowned, then pulled his weapon as well. He hero worshiped Stephen Travis, who was a second generation ATF agent, but Buck was his partner and following his lead had always served him well. 

They spread out, Buck taking the left-hand side of the door and JD the right-hand side, flattening themselves against the wall to cover Stephen as he just opened the door and stepped in. 

He stood silhouetted against the open door for a moment while his eyes adjusted, then moved a few steps inside. 

Buck and JD stepped around the door, again flattening themselves against the wall, this time inside the warehouse. 

Stephen looked around a bit then nodded towards the office which was upstairs, set on iron posts and with windows all around that let the people in the office have a good overview of the aisles of the warehouse. "Tag said he'd wait under the office. That should be it." 

He once again strode confidently forwards. 

Buck and JD followed, still covering him and each other. 

They had just reached the end of the row and Stephen had stepped out into the clear area that the forklifts used as a turnaround point when Buck spotted someone rising up from below the window in the office, the silhouette of a gun in his hand. 

"Gun! Down!" he shouted. 

Stephen hit the floor grabbing for his gun as Buck and JD simultaneously, shouted, "ATF! Drop the weapon!" then opened fire as the man fired down on them. 

As Stephen scrambled towards cover, Buck and JD continued to fire at the assailant. Just before he reached the crates he was angling for, a second gunman popped up at the opposite end of the office and opened fire, pumping two bullets into Stephen before he could reach the cover. 

He slumped to the floor, lying motionless. 

JD yelled at Buck, "Cover me!" He charged out of cover and ran for Stephen, grabbing him and dragging him behind the crates as Buck lay down a withering cover fire. 

Seconds later they heard the clatter of running feet, descending the metal stairs on the opposite side of the office. 

Buck charged out of cover, running towards the sound as he popped the clip out of his gun and slammed a fresh one in. 

"Stay with Stephen! Call for medics and backup!" he yelled as he passed where JD knelt beside his downed team leader. 

JD could only nod numbly and fumble for the radio on his hip. 

*******

Buck raced through the warehouse, stopping at the ends of rows to check around them before charging down the next aisle. He could hear the runners ahead of him and knew that they were headed for the loading docks, but he had to be cautious. They could stop at any time and lay in ambush for him. 

The whole damned thing had been an ambush from the start. 

The message from Tag had been taken by JD. In hindsight that had been deliberate, routing the call to someone who wouldn't know if the caller were who he said he was or not and the meeting place had been chosen to give the ambushers the high ground. 

He hit the loading dock just in time to see someone turn the corner of the next warehouse running towards the more populous streets a few blocks over. He jumped from the dock to the ground and took off after the person, pounding down the broken up sidewalk. 

He could see the runners, two of them, ahead of him but he couldn't get a clear shot because they were zigzagging as they ran. He held on to his gun but concentrated on closing the distance hoping to get close enough to get a clear shot before they reached the crowded streets just a few blocks away. 

He didn't make it. He pinged a shot off of the corner of the last warehouse before they reached the main avenue in an attempt to keep them from turning onto it, but they quickly snapped a couple of wild shots back at him then were gone into the crowded street. 

He plunged on. Shoving people out of his way as he went. Ahead he could see where they had knocked over a small table. A woman was on the sidewalk trying to pick up whatever they had knocked over. 

Farther along the road, people screamed and dove for cover as the two men shoved their way through them. 

A black car careened around the corner and screeched to a halt. The back door was flung open and the two men that Buck had been chasing dove in barely getting the door closed before the car sped off. 

Buck cursed silently, bending over to put his hands on his knees as he panted for breath. He'd have sworn aloud, if he'd had the breath. Straightening up, he reached for his radio as he turned to look back at the path the men had taken, calculating who might have gotten a good look at the men. His gaze was immediately drawn back to the young woman still gathering up her things from the sidewalk. 

As he checked in with JD about Stephen and Chris Larabee, Stephen's second in command, filling him in on the situation, he walked back towards the young woman. 

As he neared her he could see that what she was desperately scrabbling around picking up was money. It was all small denomination bills, mostly ones and fives with a few tens mixed in... but there was also a few playing cards, specifically three queens, each bowed slightly in the middle. His mind quickly added up the pieces and came to the conclusion that the woman had been running a three-card Monte game... an illegal street con. 

Reaching her he leaned down, "Ma'am. I'm an ATF agent. I need to talk to you." 

She shook her head and scrabbled away from him. 

"Ma'am!" he said louder. "I'm not interested in your little card scam. I'm interested in the men that knocked you over. They shot an ATF agent. I need a description." 

She shook her head. "I didn't see them." 

Annoyed, he reached down and grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet and giving her a shake. "You had to have seen them! They were right on top of you!" 

He shook her again, as she tried to pull loose from his grip. 

Suddenly something hit him from the back slamming into the back of his knees and making them buckle. He went to his knees but didn't lose his grip on the woman as small fists pounded on his back. 

"Nonie! Nonie! Let my Nonie go!" a child's voice yelled at him. 

He tried to twist around and grab the child, losing his hold on the woman as he did so. He quickly learned that that was a mistake when, as soon as she was free, the woman kicked him in an extremely delicate area. 

He howled and forgot about trying to hold either one of them, in favor of covering his privates with his hands, as he doubled over in agony. 

The woman stuffed as much of the money she held as she could into the unzipped waist wallet fastened around her waist and swept up the child turning to run, only to collide with a wall of flesh. 

Agents Josiah Sanchez and his partner Nathan Jackson had answered the call for backup from their teammates and being closer to Buck's location when he had called in after losing the shooters had come to see if he needed any help. 

Both Josiah and Nathan were big men, Josiah standing six-foot three inches and Nathan topping him by an inch. Their size alone was enough to intimidate most people. 

Apparently, the young woman wasn't most people. She did jump back but when Nathan grabbed her arm, she instantly reversed her direction, stepping back in toward Nathan, bringing her heel down hard on his instep, never losing her grip on the little girl she held in her arms. 

Nathan grunted but didn't let go, although he did bend forwards slightly in pain. She immediately took advantage of his head coming down to her level and slammed her forehead into his face, flattening his nose. Then she ducked under his arm and twisted free of him, only to have Josiah grab her other arm as she swung passed him. 

He lost his grip almost immediately, as someone else attacked him from behind. 

"Run, Nonie!" A new voice shouted. 

A foot dug into the back of his left calf at the top of the muscle, buckling his knee and sending him to his knees as his attacker literally climbed up his back, strong hands gripping his shoulders as the attacker hoisted himself up onto Josiah's back. A leg wrapped around Josiah's right side pinning his right arm to his body. The left foot left the back of his calf just before he hit the ground and the attacker wrapped that leg around Josiah from the left locking his ankles together with his legs wrapped around Josiah's chest and upper arms, pinning both to Josiah's sides. He then quickly shifted his hands from Josiah's shoulders to wrap them around the big man's neck in a choke-hold. 

It was a remarkably effective way for a smaller person to take down a larger one. 

The only thing that Josiah could do was throw himself backwards hoping to dislodge the attacker. 

The boy grunted when they hit the ground but refused to relinquish his choke-hold, clamping down on it tenaciously, with wiry strength, as Josiah rolled trying to shake him off. 

The woman darted away, but she had to pass Buck and, although still in agony from where she had kicked him, he launched himself at her knees as she went by and took her down. 

Chris Larabee arrived on the scene just then, gaping at the sight of three of his teammates, struggling with two teenagers and a child. 

Buck was trying to just keep a grip on the young woman as she kicked and wiggled in an attempt to get free. The little girl she still held on to was helpfully hitting and kicking at Buck every chance she got. 

Josiah was rolling around on the ground, with a teenage boy clinging to his back, arms wrapped around his neck in a choke-hold, legs wrapped around his upper arms and chest. Nathan limped around them trying to pry the boy off with one hand while he held his obviously broken nose with the other. 

Chris scowled at the tableau. 

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?" he bellowed. 

When that didn't even get him a look, let alone an answer even from his own teammates, he drew his gun and fired into a convenient piece of bare ground between the sidewalk and the curb. 

The gunshot stopped all motion. He brought the gun up to point at the teen-aged boy. "Get off him," he ordered. 

Blue eyes glared at him defiantly, then shifted to look at the woman. 

She nodded. 

Only then did the kid unwrap his legs from around Josiah and release his choke-hold on Josiah's neck, stepping away from him. 

"Hands on the wall, feet back and spread. I'm sure you know the drill." Chris ordered. 

The teen gave him a disdainful look but obeyed. 

Chris waggled the gun at the woman, "You, too." 

She glared at him, as the boy had, as she rose gracefully to her feet, still holding the little girl. 

"Put the kid down." 

"I suppose you want her to 'assume the position' as well." The voice was as disdainful as the look she gave him. 

"That won't be necessary. Josiah, take the kid and call for a police woman and social services," Chris ordered. 

"Noooo! NO! NO! NO!" the child screamed, clinging desperately to the woman. 

The woman obediently released her hold on the child, but the little girl wrapped her arms and legs tightly around the woman and refused to let go. 

When Josiah finally managed to pry her arms from around the woman's neck and pull her away, she wiggled, squirmed and struggled, crying, "Nonie! Nonie! Nonie!" over and over as she tried to get free of him and back to the woman. 

Nathan limped over to cover the two prisoners as Chris moved to pat them down. 

On closer look the woman was clearly no older than the boy, making them both teens and since the little girl was five or six, it was unlikely that she was their daughter. She could be a younger sister. The two teens looked enough alike to be siblings. Both had long dark hair, the girl's hair darker, curlier and more auburn than the boy's hair. His hair was lighter, more a dark honey blond hanging in waves rather than curls and his eyes were a startling shade of blue. The older girl's eyes were an unusual jade green, while the little girl had dark brown eyes. 

It was possible that they were all siblings, but the variation in eye color was unusual if they were. 

When the two teens had been searched and handcuffed, Chris turned to his teammates. "Which one of you wants to tell me how the three of you came to be getting your asses kicked by a couple of kids?" 

Josiah and Nathan exchanged looks, Nathan's hand still cupped his broken nose and his eyes were rapidly swelling shut. Josiah nodded then said, "Buck was down when we got here, and she was fleeing. We tried to stop her and... well, she, uh..." 

"Kicked your asses," the girl supplied, preening slightly, one hand coming up to fluff her hair. 

That was when Nathan noticed that the handcuffs, that Chris had borrowed from him to cuff her with, were missing. "What happened to your handcuffs?" he demanded. 

She turned innocent green eyes on him. "What handcuffs?" she asked batting her eyes at him. 

"My handcuffs! The handcuffs he just put on you!" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," she smiled sweetly. 

He huffed and stalked over, grabbing a wrist and pulling it behind her. He pulled out his spare cuffs and ratcheted one down tight on the slender wrist, before pulling the other behind her and doing the same to it. He shoved her towards his and Josiah's car and put her in the back seat, closing the door. 

Buck struggled slowly to his feet. 

Chris let him get on them before asking, "How'd you get involved with these three anyhow?" 

Buck grimaced in pain then managed to grunt out, "She saw the shooter... up close. He knocked her down. I just wanted to question her. She wouldn't even look at me, so I grabbed her arm... just to get her attention. The little one came out of nowhere, hit me in the back of the knees and I went down. Then she kicked me," his hand again cupped his poor aching balls, "and I sorta let go of her." 

"That's when we arrived," Josiah put in. "Nathan grabbed her. She stomped his instep with her high heel. That's why he's limping. Then when he involuntarily bent over, she smashed his nose with her forehead and twisted loose from him. I grabbed her and that's when the kid jumped me from behind." 

Chris shook his head. It was a mess. A good lawyer could probably make a case for self-defense since Buck had grabbed the girl first, even if it was only to get her attention. 

He sighed, "She doesn't seem inclined to cooperate and give a description?" 

"Nope," Buck confirmed, "not in the least." 

"We could offer her a deal, drop all charges in exchange for identifying the shooters?" Chris suggested. 

"Might work. Might not. They've both got that hard-eyed look that kids get when they've been on the streets a while," Buck said. 

"We'll take them downtown, run them through processing, see what we can find out about them. The more we know about them, the better our chances of getting them to cooperate," Chris said. 

Buck nodded, but he wasn't hopeful. The longer kids lived on the streets the less likely it was that they would cooperate with the law and these two had obviously been on the streets for a while. 

As Buck headed towards Chris' Dodge Ram he saw JD pull up in the plain wrap that Stephen had been driving. He frowned. 

When JD walked over to him Buck noted the grief on his face. Chris had stopped and was waiting for them to catch up. 

"Stephen?" Buck asked dreading the answer, knowing that JD would have stayed at the hospital to await any news on Stephen if there had been any news to wait on. 

JD swallowed hard. "DOA," he informed them grimly. 

He paused then added, "We found Eban, Tag's partner in the dumpster behind the warehouse with a bullet between his eyes. No sign of Tag though." 

All three men bowed their heads for a moment in grief. 

Stephen Travis had been a good leader and a good friend. His father, Orrin Travis, was the assistant director in charge of the Denver office and the one that had recruited Chris and Buck from Denver PD four years before, assigning them to Stephen's team. He'd take the news hard. Stephen had been his only child. 

Tag and Eban had been living in the streets of Denver for years, had been snitches for Chris and Buck when they still worked for Denver PD. The two elderly men kept an eye on the new comers to the streets, trying to help them as much as possible. They had formed a sort of floating village of street people who looked to them for advice and aid. 

Chris frowned, looking around. "I don't see any of the villagers...." he said, using the term that the team used to refer to Tag and Eban's followers. "Someone should be working the street at this time of day. Josiah take JD and see if you can locate Eban's daughter or any of the others. See if they know anything. We need to find Tag. If they killed Eban, Tag is probably in danger, too." 

*******

Several hours later, JD dropped two folders on Chris' desk. One was thick, the other one extremely thin. He held on to a third folder. 

Josiah stepped around JD to prop a hip up on the corner of Chris' desk. 

Chris looked up at them and picked up the folders. He flipped open the thick one first. 

Inside the front cover a picture of the male teen stared back at him. He began to read the vital statistics. 

The kid's name was Vincent James Tanner. He'd been born in Texas and was sixteen years old. His mother had been clerking in a convenience store where she was killed during a robbery in 1993 when the boy was five. The kid had been given into the custody of his grandfather who was a Texas Ranger. The grandfather had retired and moved to Denver shortly after the kid came to live with him. He'd bought a small ranch and they had lived there until the grandfather died of a cancer in 1997 when the kid was nine. The ranch had had to be sold to pay the grandfather's outstanding debts, mostly hospital bills. The boy had been placed in foster care and remained in the first home for four years until he was thirteen. Then the foster mother had died in a car wreck and the husband, who was also injured, was deemed unable to continue caring for the boy on his own. In the next two years the boy had been in and out of half a dozen foster homes usually running away and living on the streets until he was picked up and returned to the foster care system. He'd been arrested twice for stealing food and he had been placed on probation but had violated it when he run away from his last foster home. That had been just over a year ago. The probation would have ended two months ago, if he hadn't violated it. Still he hadn't been picked up or arrested for anything until now. 

A year-long blank, when apparently he had been living on the streets but hadn't done any of the things that usually brought street kids to the attention of the police. 

Chris looked down at the list of personal effects and blinked. There was no wallet or ID. Aside from his clothes, the kid had been carrying a pocketknife, a length of rope, a sock full of sand, (a homemade sap) and eleven hundred, fifty-one dollars and seventeen cents. 

"He had nearly twelve hundred dollars on him?" 

"Yes, sir. Wait'll you see how much the other one had on him!" JD said in enthusiastically. 

Chris scowled, "Him? The other one was a girl." 

"Not according to the police women that searched him," Josiah rumbled. 

Chris grabbed the other folder and flipped it open. A mug shot of the girl they had arrested stared out at him from the left-hand side of the folder. On the right hand side the data sheet was mostly blank. 

At the top was Jane Doe, #4568 crossed out with John Doe #7843 typed behind it. The rest of the sheet was blank except for the personal effects list. She had had a waist wallet containing only money, no ID. The money in the wallet had totaled seven hundred forty-three dollars and fifteen cents. 

But then she/he had had money taped to her/his body in various places. The search had turned up five thousand dollars, divided into one thousand-dollar lots taped to various parts of her/his body. There had been two five hundred dollar bills taped to her/his right thigh, left thigh, right hip and left hip. Taped to her/his chest, under the mastectomy forms that he wore in her/his bustier to give the appearance of breasts, was two sets of twenties, totaling five hundred dollars each. 

Chris leaned back and stared up at JD. "His fingerprints weren't in the database?" he asked.

"No, sir. They're not in ours or the Colorado DMV. We're still running them. We've sent them to the FBI and to the DMV's of the surrounding states." 

"He's a little young for his prints to be in the DMV, isn't he?" Buck said with a frown.

"Probably, but you have to remember that he was dressed as girl," Josiah said, "and because it was an excellent impersonation, once it was revealed as a disguise it becomes obvious that he knows *how* to disguise himself. With makeup girls can look a lot older than they are. If he dressed older, make himself up older and lied about his age, he might have been able to get a license. They have to be living somewhere and with the amount of money that they had on them they could afford a car or maybe a van. I instructed JD to check the DMVs just to be thorough." 

Chris nodded, his attention drawn back to the amount of money the kids had had on them. "These two kids had approximately seven *thousand* dollars between the two of them and they are living on the streets?" 

"Looks like," JD confirmed. He looked down at the folder in his hand. "It gets better or worse depending on your point of view." 

He held the last folder out, saying, "The little girl's prints were in the database. Missing persons, kidnap victim. Her name is Cassandra Wells. The ransom was paid and two of the kidnappers were caught, but the kid was never recovered. The kidnappers claimed that she escaped. That was eleven months ago. She would have been four years old at the time. She's just turned five." 

Chris leaned back in his chair and motioned JD to sit down. "Not likely she could have escaped on her own...." 

JD dropped into the chair in front of Chris' desk and finished the thought, "...but if she had help." 

"Like a couple of street smart teens..." Josiah added. 

An evil grin crossed Chris' face. "Our mystery guest," he waved the almost empty folder at JD, "isn't interested in cooperating with our investigation, seems to think that the charges we could bring aren't strong enough to be an inducement to do so.... But he is the only person who might be able to identify Stephen's killer. So, what if instead of assuming that he or she, as he appears to prefer, may have helped this poor little girl escape from her kidnappers we suggest to him that we believe that he may have been involved in the kidnapping...." 

"Kidnapping's a real serious offense...." Josiah frowned. 

"...and we don't really think that he had anything to do with it, do we?" JD put in. 

Chris thought a long moment then shook his head. "No, I don't. I think I've gotten a pretty good read on the Tanner kid while we were running him through processing. He's tough but he doesn't seem all that hardened. I'm relatively certain he wouldn't have anything to do with a kidnapping. Then there was the way that the little one clung to the other kid, coming to his defense when Buck grabbed him, screaming and crying when Josiah tried to get her away from him. She was clean, better dressed than most street kids, and doesn't seem to have missed a lot of meals..." 

"... so they were taking care of her." 

Chris opened the file and checked something. "According to this, she has no signs of malnutrition, very unusual in a street kid, and no scars or bruises that would indicate abuse of any kind. She's bright, articulate and stubborn, not at all afraid to speak her mind. Keeps demanding that they take her back to 'Nonie', which is what she calls the boy that was carrying her." 

"So, threatening to bring kidnapping charges is just a threat. You don't really mean to do it," JD asked just to reassure himself on the subject. 

Chris looked up at Josiah, "You're the profiler. Do you think that threatening to bring kidnapping charges would be inducement enough to get the kid to talk?" 

Josiah was silent for so long that Chris thought he might not answer, then finally he said. "I agree with you about the Tanner kid. He seems tough but not hardened, but this one... I can't get a fix on him. He seems softer than Tanner in some ways and harder in others," he rubbed his goatee, thoughtfully. 

Finally he said, "No. I don't think that threats will work. Threats will only make him dig in his heels. He's very intelligent, it shows in his eyes, but he's calculating, too. You can almost see the wheels turning as he adds and subtracts, multiplies and divides, figuring the odds of escaping or getting free. Did I tell you that he made another pair of Nate's handcuffs disappear? When we took him out of the car to process him, they were gone. I practically tore the unit apart hunting them. Didn't find them." 

"Great! An anonymous magician," Chris muttered. 

JD's head snapped up. "Anonymous... Nonie? You don't think that he told them his name was anonymous, do you?" 

Josiah grinned, a chuckle escaping him. "I think, that he would think that, that was funny." 

"So how do we get him to talk?" Chris demanded, bringing them back to the main point. 

Josiah got thoughtful again, but it was JD who finally spoke. "You know the only question he asked the whole time was where was Casey being taken. I think he was really upset about being separated from her. Maybe if we offered to let him see her...." 

"I don't know if we can do that. Her grandmother has already been informed that she's been found and is on the way in to see about taking custody," Chris told him. 

"Oh, okay. It was just a suggestion." 

"And not a bad one either, John Dunne," Josiah told him. He slipped off the edge of Chris' desk and began to pace in the area between that desk and Buck and JD's. "Casey seemed attached to both teenagers. Tanner seems very protective of Nonie, as they call our mystery guest, and while Nonie tries hard not to seem concerned about Tanner, he couldn't help but ask after Casey's fate. Maybe he is more concerned about Tanner than he wants to let on." 

"So, we threaten Tanner?" Chris asked his expression clearly saying that he wasn't much in favor of the idea. 

"Oh, no," Josiah reassured him with a grin. "I don't think that you'll get any better results by threatening Tanner than by threatening Nonie. I suggest you *talk* to Tanner. His file says that his grandfather was a Texas Ranger. Explain to him that an officer and friend has been killed in the line of duty. Ask him how he thinks his grandfather would have felt about that, losing a fellow officer on the line. Tell him that Nonie is the only person that we think got a good enough look at the killer to identify him. Tell him that if he can get Nonie to describe the killer we'll let them both go, no charges." 

"We might need Nonie to testify." 

"I don't think that there is anything you can do to get him to willingly and forcing him to could backfire." 

"How?" 

"If you forced him to testify you'd have to have him declared a hostile witness. He could show up dressed as a girl, an event likely to prejudice the jury against him and his testimony. Even if you forced him to cut his hair and dress like a boy he could mince and prance and act like a flaming fairy. Again, an event likely to have the jury discarding his testimony," Josiah said. 

"Shit," Chris swore softly. 

He knew, as well as anyone, that in the courtroom image meant a lot. If the killer showed up all suited up and looking like a decent respectable person and the main witness against him showed up looking like either a teen-aged transvestite or a flaming fairy they might as well just pack it up and go home. 

He sighed, "So, what you're saying is that our only hope is to get Nonie to testify willingly and you're also saying that you don't think it will happen." 

Josiah shrugged, "I could be wrong. Depends on how persuasive you can be with Tanner and how persuasive he can be with Nonie." 

Chris shook his head, "Great... and you're the one that tells me I have no sense of diplomacy at all." He looked up at Josiah. "How about you talk to Tanner?" 

"He seems to have taken to you. Why I don't know, but I think you're the one to talk to him."

Chris took a deep breath and stood up. "Get Tanner in an interview room. I'll take a stab at it." 

*******

Chris stood behind the two-way mirror and watched as Tanner was led into the interview room. He still had his handcuffs on. Either Nonie hadn't taught him his little trick, or he had chosen not to use it. 

The teenager kept his head up, not really defiant but not as subdued as most teens would have been after an afternoon in a jail cell. He didn't look particularly scared either. 

Chris waited until he was seated and the officer that had led him in had retreated from the room before moving to leave the observation room and enter the interview room. Tanner had looked directly at the mirror when he'd been sat down at the table. Chris had been stunned to find that Tanner's eyes had actually met his although it was impossible for Tanner to know exactly where to look to do so. 

*******

Vin Tanner looked up at the mirror on the wall of the interview room as the officer sat him down at the table. In a way it was amusing that the mirror was there. Everybody knew that there was an observation room beyond it. All having the mirror on this side did was keep the prisoner from seeing *who* was there and when. 

Somehow he knew, without knowing how he knew that it was the blond-headed ATF agent in there. The one that the others had called Chris or Larabee. He'd felt from the moment he'd first met the man's eyes that there was something between them, some kind of connection. He didn't have a clue what it was, but he had known he could trust the man. He knew that logically he shouldn't, but his instincts said he could and he trusted his instincts. They were seldom wrong. 

He looked up when the blond agent stepped through the door into the interview room and met his eyes. He felt the connection again. Felt that he could trust this man. 

He cocked an eyebrow. _[That you behind the mirror a minute ago?]_

The agent smiled and gave him a slight nod, before his face settled back into an expression of sadness. _[Yes.]_

The blond agent sat down across from him, "My name is Agent Larabee. I have a few questions to ask you." 

Vin nodded, "Vin Tanner," he said and stretched his hands across the table, ignoring the handcuffs as he offered to shake hands. 

Larabee took the outstretched hand and gave it a firm shake. "Pleased to meet you," he said. 

Vin leaned back in his chair. "Ya know, I think you actually mean that." 

Chris thought a minute before answering and realized that he did mean it. "I do," he said firmly. "I'm not sure why, but I am pleased to meet you." 

Vin grinned, "Likewise." _[I'm not sure why either but I am pleased.]_

"You want those bracelets off?" 

"I'd appreciate it." 

Chris stood and leaned over the table, unlocking the handcuffs. "Your friend would have already had them off." 

"Yep," Vin grinned at him as he sat back rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been, "but I ain't him." 

"He didn't teach you his trick?" 

"He tried," Vin answered acknowledging that he knew Nonie was male. 

"So, you know your friend isn't a girl." 

"Be hard not to. We've been living in each other's pockets for nigh a year. Sleeping together for mosta it." 

Chris sat back his lips thinning, "Sleeping together as in sleeping or as in sex?" 

"Now? Both. In the beginning, just *sleeping* together." 

"What about the little girl?" 

Anger flared in Tanner's eyes. " We took damned good care of Case. Wouldn't never hurt her like that and don't appreciate yer thinkin' we might. Though I reckon you was thinkin' more along the lines that Nonie mighta than I mighta." 

"Nonie? That your friend's real name?" 

"Ain't none of your business," Tanner snapped. 

"Look," Chris snapped back. "I'm not the most diplomatic person at the best of times and a fellow officer was killed today. Stephen Travis was not only my boss he was a friend. Your friend is the only person who might have gotten a good look at the killer. I want that killer and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get him. I'm willing to let you and your friend walk, no charges at all for a description of the killer." 

"He won't testify. He can't." 

"Why not?" 

"Can't tell you. Not my secret. Not my place to tell." 

Chris jumped up shaking his head and started pacing, after a minute he turned back to face Tanner. "According to the file, your grandfather was a Texas Ranger. You reckon he ever lost a friend in the line of duty." 

"A few." 

"How do you think he'd have felt, knowing that someone could ID the killer and just flat refused to do it." 

"Reckon he'd've felt bad... but I think he mighta wondered if there might not be a damned good reason why that person refused." 

"But you won't tell me why." 

"But I will tell you, that there is a damned good reason." Vin met his eyes. _[Trust me. There is a reason. He's not just being stubborn.]_

"Look we know these men killed an ATF agent. We suspect they killed another man as well and may be going after a third. Your friend could possibly save a life by giving us the description. We need him to talk to us. Is there any chance that you could talk him into giving the description... if I promised he wouldn't have to testify." 

"Can you keep that promise?" 

"I'll try." 

"There is no try, only do or do not." 

"What?" 

"That's what Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, when he was trying to lift the fighter ship with his mind." 

"Yeah, well I'm no Jedi Knight. All I can do is try." 

"All right. Then all I can do is try. Do we walk if I try?" 

"If you try and talk him into giving us a description, you can walk. No charges." 

"No. If I try, even if he still refuses, we both walk. No charges." Vin sat forward and met his eyes, his face set in a stubborn expression. 

Chris considered for a long moment, then frowned. "You're still sixteen. Even if we drop all the charges you'll have to go back into foster care." 

"No. I got a year and a half until I'm eighteen and it's about the same until Nonie is. We can take care of ourselves. We walk out of here, free and clear." 

"That I can't do." 

"Then there's no deal." 

"Look how about this. You stay with me until you're eighteen." 

"What about Nonie and Casey?" 

"Casey's grandmother has already taken her home. She was a kidnap victim..." 

"We know that. We got her loose," Vin snapped. 

"If you'd left her alone she'd have been home--" 

"Hell she woulda! They woulda kill her! Bastard that was watching her kept touching her, running his hands up under her dress and rubbing himself. If we hadn't come up with a plan and distracted him, he'd've raped her!" 

Chris blanched, but for some reason he didn't doubt the kid's word. He held up his hand. "All right... but she's home now, safe and sound with her grandmother and changing that isn't a negotiable item." 

"Where's her ma and pa?" 

"According to her grandmother, her mother got pregnant without being married. Her father never was in the picture and her mother was killed when the kid was snatched. The ransom demand, fifty thousand dollars, went to the grandmother. She had to mortgage her ranch to pay it, but she did pay it. She had already lost her daughter and didn't want to lose her granddaughter as well." 

"That leaves Nonie." 

Chris shook his head. "I don't know.... I think that you and I could get along all right. I live on a ranch. I have horses. According to your folder, your granddaddy had a ranch and horses. Figure you might like living on my ranch but your friend.... I just don't know, and I can't condone the two of you having sex...." 

"That ain't your call." 

"In my house it's my call." 

Vin looked down at the table then sighed and looked back up. "Up to Nonie. If he agrees to not having sex, I'll agree... but we're a package deal and you might as well get used to the idea that when we are eighteen, ain't you or nobody else coming between us. I love him... and he loves me. We've done made plans for when we're of age and we ain't changing them." 

"You'll have to go to school." 

"No. That's too dangerous for Nonie. We're almost ready to take our GEDs. Hell, Nonie could pass his now. He's just waiting for me to finish studying for it. He's been tutoring me ever since we met. With a decent place to stay and without Casey to look after and a living to make, I can finish up and be ready to take the test in a couple more months." 

"You are sixteen. I don't reckon that I can make you go, if you don't want to... but Nonie takes his GED immediately and you take yours as soon as you think you can pass it." 

"He says that I can probably *pass* it now, but the higher I score the better. He wants me to wait until I can score at least the equivalent of a B or maybe even an A." 

Chris went back to pacing, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. How in hell had this turned into a negotiation? He didn't negotiate... but if he wanted the kid to talk to the other kid for him, it looked like he was going to have to. 

"All right. You take your GED when Nonie thinks that you can score the equivalent of an A or a B." He fixed Tanner with look. "You don't seem worried about his score." 

"He's real smart." He tilted his head and looked up at Chris, "So, this is the deal. I talk to Nonie about giving you a description of the guy that shot your friend. Whether or not he agrees to do it, we walk, no charges. We go live with you until we're eighteen then we're free to leave." 

Chris nodded. "That's the deal." 

"One more question. Where do I talk to him and where will you be while I'm talkin' to him?" 

"You'll talk to him here." 

"And you'll be...." Vin let it trail off into a question, inclining his head towards the mirror. 

"Yeah... and I'd appreciate your not telling him that I'm there." 

"I doubt that I'll need to tell him that *someone* is there." 

Chris nodded. Then turned to leave. "I'll have him brought in." 

*******

Ezra Standish, AKA Nonie, AKA Anonymous, walked along beside the guard who was holding his arm, with graceful strides. His calf-length skirt swirled softly around his legs as his hips swayed gently as he walked. The soft-soled slippers that they had given him when they had taken his high heels, declaring them to be usable as weapon's (Nathan's limp providing evidence of the validity of that statement) made no sound on the tiled floor, while the guard's leather soled shoes rang loudly. 

He was led into the room where Vin waited and ordered to sit at the table. He sat, his movements as graceful as a dancer's. He clasped his hands in front of him on the table, ignoring the indignity of the plastic tie that held his wrists together. Until he looked over at Vin and noted that his friend's hands were unfettered. 

Turning to look at the mirror, he addressed it, "This hardly seems fair. Mister Tanner is quite unfettered, whilst I must labor beneath the indignity of being bound." 

Chris shook his head at the haughty English tinged accent, frowning as he seemed to remember that the kid had sounded distinctly southern previously, and reached down to activate the intercom, which would allow the prisoners to hear him. "Mister Tanner didn't make two pairs of handcuffs disappear into thin air." 

Nonie smiled smugly and informed the mirror. "Some of us are more talented than others. Might I inquire, why I am here? I believe that I have already been interviewed." 

Vin chose to answer the question. "They want me to try and get ya to give them a description of the guy that knocked you down." 

"I've already told them that I will not testify." 

"They're not asking you to testify, just describe the guy," Vin argued. 

"Yeah, right," Nonie said derisively, "and just how do they intend to convict him without my testimony?" 

"Nonie, the guy killed a cop! You know my granddaddy was a Texas Ranger. You know how I feel about cop killers!" 

"I know and obviously so do they. They're manipulating you. Can't you see that?" 

"I *do* see that, but it don't change the facts. The guy killed a cop. Granddaddy---" 

"You and your sainted grandfather are going to get us both killed!" Nonie rose in a swirl of skirts turning on Vin, leaning over him. "You know I can't testify!" he hissed. "To testify in a court of law you have to give your real name. To be a viable witness I would have to cut my hair and become a boy again!" 

Chris leaned forwards. Josiah had said the kid was smart, always thinking but he hadn't realized that the boy would think of things like that or even know about courtroom image and how important it was. 

"My name would appear in official court records. That's all it would take. He'd find me. He'd find us... and he'll kill us both. You slowly and painfully in front of me to make me tell him where *it* is and when he has what he wants, me, probably just as slowly and painfully just for the fun of it!" 

"Nonie, we gotta trust someone sometime..." 

"No! We don't. We can't trust anyone but each other! Do you know how many cops he owns?" 

"There weren't any ATF agents on the list!" 

"That list is a year old! He was just moving into gun running, which means that he would be *looking* to *buy* ATF agents! We don't dare trust any of these men!" 

"I trust Larabee." 

"Fine. Then *I* don't dare trust any of these men." 

"He made a deal with me, Nonie. If I'd talk to you, even if you still won't give him the description he'll drop all the charges and let us walk." 

"Sure, right back to Child Welfare." 

"No. He said we could stay with him until we're eighteen." 

"And you believe that?" The scorn in Nonie's voice was clear and he shot a withering glance at mirror. 

"Yeah. I do believe him." 

Nonie turned back to Vin, his voice dropping too low for Chris to hear. "And you want to go live with him?" 

"Yes, but only if you come, too." 

Chris leaned over and keyed the intercom. "Tanner aren't you forgetting something?" 

Vin bowed his head and stepped closer to Nonie. "He says that if we stay with him, we can't make love for as long as we're there 'cause we're under age." 

Nonie looked up at him with a shattered look in his eyes, "You... don't want me anymore?" he whispered. 

Vin gathered him into his arms, pressing his cheek to Nonie's as he replied, whispering forcefully into Nonie's ear. "No! I'll always want you! That's why it don't matter, if we don't do it while we're there. I love you, Nonie. We can wait. We got our whole lives ahead of us. It'll only be a little while then we'll be eighteen and we can do what we want to." 

Nonie pulled back, "A year and a half is not a little while." 

"Compared to the rest of our lives, it is." 

"The rest of our lives could be the blink of an eye." 

"Or another seventy, eighty, or ninety years. You're a gambler, Nonie, take this gamble... for me?" Vin said drawing him back into his arms. 

For a long moment Nonie stood in the circle of Vin's arms, his face pressed into Vin's shoulder. 

Finally he turned his head and looked at the mirror. 

Chris was struck by the sorrow in his eyes and the resignation on his face. 

After another long moment he pulled back out of Vin's arms and straightened, his head coming up, proud and defiant. "Did you get it in writing?" he demanded of Vin. 

"What?" Vin scowled at him. 

"Did you get the agreement in writing? Mother always says if you don't have it in writing, you don't have it at all." 

He turned towards the mirror with a stubborn look on his face. "I want it in writing," he announced, "what you agree to, what we agree to, and I want witnesses to sign it." 

Chris was glad that the kid couldn't see through the mirror to see his jaw drop. He took a deep breath and keyed the intercom. "All right. I'll get it printed out and be right back with a couple of witnesses." 

He stalked out of the observation room and took the elevator up to team seven's floor. 

Josiah met him in the bullpen, "How'd it go?" 

"I made a deal with Tanner. Nonie wants it in writing... with witnesses. You and JD are tagged." 

"Is he going to give us the description?" JD asked. 

"The deal doesn't include actually getting the description, it was just for Tanner trying to talk him into giving me the description." 

"So, are we getting the description?" JD persisted. 

"I don't know!" 

Josiah couldn't help grinning. Damn! The kid was wily as an old coyote. 

*******

An hour later, Chris returned to the interview room with Josiah and JD in tow. They had been down twice before but had had to return upstairs to make corrections on the agreement when Nonie refused to let Vin sign it, saying that certain phrases weren't clear. 

Josiah had commented that the kid was bound to be a lawyer, as picky as he was about the wording of the agreement. 

Chris just hoped, as he slapped this copy down on the table, that this time it was satisfactory. 

A moment later they all, except Nonie, sighed in relief as Nonie said, "This looks much better. If you will sign first, Mister Larabee..." He slid the paper across to him. 

Chris signed it and pushed it back. Vin then signed it. Then pushed it to Nonie. 

Nonie smiled at him and shook his head, pushing the paper to Josiah. "The witnesses sign next. My signature is not required. If you read the document carefully you will see that I have not agreed to anything. This is strictly between Mister Tanner and Mister Larabee. My release and the provision for my living at Mister Larabee's ranch were contingent *only* on Mister Tanner's *attempting* to *talk me into* giving the description, not on my *giving* the description." 

"You mean you're not going to give us the description? That's... that's despicable!" JD said.

"I never agreed to give the description," Nonie said calmly. 

"But... but..." JD sputtered. 

"JD. Sit down and be quiet. This," Chris lay his hand on the agreement, "is a show of faith, a show of trustworthiness on my part. I drop all the charges, take them home with me, let them live there and by doing so, I prove that I can be trusted. It may take some time but if we're patient, maybe Nonie here will give us the description we need." 

"Meanwhile Stephen's killer walks around free and Tag's life is in danger if they haven't already killed him!" 

Chris surged to his feet, "What do you want me to do? Beat it out of him?" 

"No! No! Of course not!" 

"Then how do you suggest I get it? He's just a kid, JD. They're both just scared kids, trying to survive on their own with nobody to depend on but each other. Maybe it's time someone reached out a helping hand, even knowing that they might not get anything in return." 

"Cast your bread upon the waters," Josiah intoned. 

"And it shall return to you seven-fold," Nonie finished the quote. 

Everyone turned to look at him. 

"Keep your end of the bargain and I will give serious thought to giving you the description that you need." 

Chris gave a nod, and turned to Josiah, saying, "Josiah, take the boys up to our offices. I'm going down to processing. I'll get every copy of their hard copy files. JD, by the time I get back to the bullpen I want every trace of them out of the computer system. They never came through here." 

JD swallowed hard, then nodded. "Yes, sir." 

*******

Chris groaned inwardly when he saw AD Travis as he stepped through the door into the prisoner processing area, but he knew he couldn't avoid the man. 

Orrin Travis was a bulldog of a man, far more suited to the life of a federal agent then his son had been. 

Travis looked up and saw Chris as the taller agent headed for him. "Chris!" he called, motioning him over. 

When Chris joined him he saw immediately that Travis was holding the very files he wanted. "Orrin. I can't tell you how sorry I am about Stephen. He'll be sorely missed." 

"Thank you, Chris. I'm having a hard time believing that he's gone. I want to be home with Evie, Mary and Billy but I have to make sure that things are handled down here. I see that you brought these... boys(?) in." 

"Yes, sir and I need to talk to you about them, in private," Chris' tone was urgent.

Orrin led the way to an office and ousted the occupant, telling him that he needed some privacy. The officer nodded and left, aware that the AD's son had just been killed that day. 

Chris quickly explained what had happened and showed Travis the agreement that he had made with Tanner. 

"Why the hell would you make an agreement like this? Just make the kid tell you what you want to know!" 

"How?" 

"Tell him you'll prosecute him to the full extent of the law on all charges including the kidnapping!" 

"Orrin listen to me! It won't work! That kid is afraid for his life and not from the men that killed your son. When he and Tanner were talking he kept saying that if his name appeared in court records that "he", whoever he is, would find him and kill them both. He clearly said that the man would torture Tanner to death to make him tell where something was, and then do the same to him just for fun. What can we threaten him with that is worse than being tortured to death?" 

"Jesus!" Orrin turned away wiping at his eyes. "Are... are you sure about this?" 

"Tanner tried to tell him that he could trust us, that we were ATF agents and that there were no ATF agents on the "list", which apparently is a list of people that are on the guy's payroll. Nonie, the one who saw Stephen's killer, replied that the list was a year old and that the man had just been moving into gun running, which meant that he would be looking to buy ATF agents, therefore they couldn't risk trusting us." 

"I can't let you handle this investigation. I have to assign it to another team. Being Stephen's team, you're too close to the situation." 

"You do that, but don't tell them about the kids." 

"How can I *not* tell them about the kids?" 

"I came down to get their paperwork. JD's purging them from the computer as we speak." 

"You can't---" 

"Think about it! This is the *best* way to protect the only person who can describe Stephen's killer and the *only* way to earn his trust. Give me a chance here. Let me try and bring this kid around to our side. I think if Tanner were the one that got a good look at the killer there wouldn't be a problem, but he didn't and Nonie... is obviously terrified of whoever is after him. Josiah thinks that if we push him too hard, he will break before he'll bend. But if we give him breathing room, time to think then he may decide to trust us not only by giving us the description of Stephen's killer but with whatever it is that he has, that the person who is after him wants." 

Chris stopped and waited for Orrin to think about it. 

The AD stayed silent for a long time, then finally he rubbed his face and sighed. "If we pressure him and he breaks, we get nothing. If you can get him to trust you, maybe we get Stephen's killer." 

"That's the long and the short of it, sir." 

"You've already established a certain amount of understanding with him. If you hand him off to someone else, he'll view it as a betrayal, and they wouldn't stand a chance of getting him to trust them." 

"Right." 

Travis gave a sharp nod. It was unorthodox, maybe even dangerous but it was the best chance that they had at finding Stephen's killer. He took a deep breath and nodded. "Let's go get these kids paperwork." 

"Sir," Chris began. 

"No one will question an order from me," Orrin reminded him. 

Chris nodded. 

*******

Half an hour later he was back in the bullpen with all the paperwork. He walked over to where Vin and Nonie sat. 

"This is all the paperwork from where we processed you when you were brought in. JD has been purging you from the computer as well." 

He handed the paperwork and the envelopes of personal effects to Nonie. 

Nonie handed Vin's envelope to him and began going through his. 

Chris looked over at JD, "How's that coming?" 

"Well...." 

"Is there a problem?" 

"Not exactly. I have them out of our computer, but we sent her, uh, his fingerprints to the FBI and the surrounding states' DMV's." 

"Will that be a problem?" Chris asked the boys. 

Nonie answered, "No. Mother has been very conscientious about keeping my and her fingerprints out of any database." 

"And why would she do that?" 

"Mother has made a lucrative career of marrying well and divorcing better. Wealthy men routinely run background checks on prospective brides. She prefers that they only be able to check the facts that she wants them to be able to check." 

He had continued to look through the envelope of personal effects as he talked. Now, he frowned. "These are not all my personal effects." 

"What's missing?" 

"My breasts." 

"What?" JD gulped. 

"My breasts," Nonie repeated, patting his flat chest. "They took them when they searched me. Teardrop shaped, gel-filled mastectomy breast forms, with soft vinyl covering and authentic looking nipples. Made for women who have had mastectomies and guaranteed to look and move naturally under clothing. They cost forty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents plus tax, shipping and handling *each* mind you. I ordered two sets. I was wearing the B-cups today. The total delivered price was two hundred twenty-nine dollars and ninety-seven cents. Dividing by two that gives my missing effects a value of one hundred fourteen dollars and ninety-eight and one half cents." 

"Wait a minute. If you ordered them through the mail you must have a mailing address..." Josiah said. 

Nonie cocked his head and looked at him, "So?" 

"So, what is it?" 

"As if I would tell you," Nonie replied. 

Chris stood up, "Josiah, drop it. He'll talk when he feels he can trust us. I'm going to take the kids home---" 

"I'm not going anywhere without my breasts!" Nonie declared. 

The agents gaped at him. 

Vin rolled his eyes. 

Chris tried patiently to explain. "Nonie, I'm trying to keep this as quiet as possible. If I go back downstairs demanding to know what happened to your... your missing effects people are going to remember it... and talk about it. People remember unusual occurrences...." 

Nonie crossed his arms over his chest, a pout gracing the pretty face. "I can't go out in public looking like this." 

"Well, I'm not going back downstairs looking for them!" Chris snapped. 

Vin shook his head and stood up. "Look. He's stubborn as a rock," he gestured to Nonie, "and I'm starting to get it that you are, too," he looked at Chris. "So rather'n sit here all day waiting to see which one gives in first, how about ya'll give me, say, an hour to go get his other set and then you can take us home." 

"I'll need my other bustier," Nonie said. "Those forms won't fit this one." 

"I know," Vin said. 

"You two have someplace that you feel is safe enough to leave your things?" Chris questioned. Most street people carried everything that they owned everywhere with them. 

"As you well know, we have more money than most street people," Nonie informed them. "So, yes we have a safe place to leave things. Of, course I must insist that Vin go alone and that no one follows him." 

"If they try, I can lose them," Vin assured him. 

"How do we know you'll come back?" 

"Nonie stays here... and I give you my word as a Tanner," Vin said, looking Chris in the eyes. 

"Your word any good?" 

"As good as yers... and I want yer word that you won't have me followed." 

Chris started into his eyes for a long moment then nodded, "You've got it." 

"Chris!" JD protested. 

"This is about trust, JD. To get it we have to give it." 

"Seems to me we're giving a lot and getting nothing back," JD grumbled. 

Nonie turned back to them as Vin headed out the door, "Then perhaps we need to negotiate some more." 

"What about?" Chris demanded. 

"The agreement you just made was with Mister Tanner alone. I have actually received no incentive to cooperate with you." 

"What do you call my taking you in?" Chris snapped. 

"An unfortunate necessity, that may well become a disastrous situation as I fear that we are far too much alike." 

"Alike? You think we're alike?" Chris asked incredulously. 

"We are both strong-willed, independent, self-sufficient, accustomed to having our own way and doing things in our own way. Since you made no mention of discussing your decision to take us in with anyone, I assume you live alone. You are therefore accustomed to your own space, as am I. I have, shall we call them, privacy issues. I utterly detest anyone plundering in my things. You have made no mention of the exact living arrangements but if necessary I am willing to share a room with Vin..." his voice hardened, "but not with anyone else. Try to make me and I'm gone. Period. No discussion." 

"Then what exactly are we negotiating." 

"I wish to see Casey." 

"Casey's grandmother has her. I can't make her let you see Casey." 

"You can ask. I need to see her, to know that she is all right, that she is happy and being well cared for." 

"She hasn't been with her grandmother long enough for you to tell any of that." 

"Of course not! I'm not stupid. You could hardly arrange it for today or even tomorrow." He took a deep breath and reached up to rub his temples, grimacing slightly. "Saturday after next. That will be ten days from now, plenty of time to ask her grandmother, get an answer and make arrangements for a supervised visit." 

"Supervised visit?" JD asked. 

"I repeat.... I. Am. Not. Stupid. If her grandmother does love her and is the right person to be taking care of her, she is not going to want to let me see Casey without her being present. I also wish to meet the grandmother so that I can see for myself how she interacts with Casey. Whether Casey likes her, or is afraid of her, that sort of thing." 

"And what do we get?" 

"While we were down stairs, I heard talk that only two men were arrested in Casey's kidnapping. When we first saw them with her, there were three. You get the third man." 

"You can ID him?" 

"Give me a sketchpad and I can draw you a picture of him and give you the name the others called him by," Nonie said confidently. 

Chris considered it for a long moment. Then turned to JD. "Can you hack the FBI system and get the file on the Wells' kidnapping?" 

"Sure but---" 

"We can't let them know that we have a possible witness in their case, or they'll be over here trying to take Nonie away from us." He reached up to rub the back of his neck, "God this is a mess. How in hell does a sixteen year old get mixed up in two federal cases?" 

Nonie rolled his eyes, "Just lucky I guess." 

Chris shook his head, then picked up a yellow legal pad and handed it to Nonie, "Here, write up the agreement, the way you want it. I'll read it and decide then if I can sign off on it." 

By the time that Vin returned, carrying a small gym bag, Nonie had written up the agreement and Josiah had printed it out. Chris was reading it over as Vin walked back in the door and tossed the bag at Nonie. 

"Figured you'd want a couple of changes of clothes until you could shop," he told him. "Got a couple of pairs of jeans and T-shirts in there for me too." 

Nonie stood up and glanced around, "Can I use that office to---" 

"That's Stephen's office!" JD snapped. 

"Perhaps the break room would be better," Josiah suggested, gesturing towards it." 

"Of course," Nonie said to Josiah, "I meant no offense. I was not aware that that was Mister Travis' office." 

"I understand," Josiah assured him and walked alongside him to the door of the break room. "I'll just stay right here to make sure no one disturbs you." 

"Certainly," Nonie replied knowing full well that what he meant was 'I'll just stand here and make sure you don't disappear.' 

Vin glanced over Chris' shoulder at the agreement he was reading. "What's that?" 

"Your friend has negotiated another agreement." 

"What's it say?" 

Chris looked up at him and grinned, then began reading aloud. "Agreement between Agent Chris Larabee of the ATF and "Nonie", a minor male child in his custody. Agent Larabee agrees to attempt to negotiate a visitation with the minor child Cassandra Wells and the minor child "Nonie" in the presence of Ms. Wells' grandmother for the purpose of determining if said child is happy and if said grandmother is taking proper care of said minor child. Said visit is to be conducted ten days hence at the residence of Agent Larabee and in his presence. Other persons to be present at said visit include, but are not limited to, Mr. Vin Tanner and ATF Agent Josiah Sanchez. In exchange for Agent Larabee's attempt to arrange said visit, the minor child, Nonie agrees to present Agent Larabee with a sketch of the third kidnapper in the Wells case, even should said visit be denied. Signed and Witnessed this fifteenth day of September, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Three." 

"Nonie wrote that?" 

"Every word, Chris grinned. 

Vin shook his head, "And he swears he ain't gonna be no lawyer. Sure sounds like one." 

"Yep," Chris agreed. 

Just then Nonie emerged from the break room. He hadn't actually changed clothes, simply taken off his blouse, changed bustiers, inserted the breast forms and redressed. "Is the agreement satisfactory, Mister Larabee?" 

"I don't see anything wrong with it. According to it, you give me the sketch even if I don't get you a visit. Is that correct?" 

"Correct." 

"Then I guess the only thing I need is for you to prove you can draw." 

For an instant Nonie stared at him, then he burst out with a short laugh. "I am so sorry! It never occurred to me to prove that point to you. However, it will be quite easy I believe." He glanced around at the various desks and the nameplates on them, then said, "I assume that B. Wilmington and N. Jackson, are the mustached gentleman and the African American gentleman that we encountered this morning?" 

"Yes." 

"Very well then, as they are not here, they will serve as a test of not only my skill as an artist but of my ability to sketch from memory as well. If I might have some unlined paper...." 

Josiah was quick to provide him with a small sheaf of blank copier paper. 

Nonie sat down at one of the desks, picked up a pencil and began to draw. In just a few minutes he handed Chris a quick but accurate sketch of Buck. The one of Nathan took longer as he used shading to show Nathan's dark complexion. 

Both were amazingly accurate and detailed. Buck had that determined look on his face that he got when he was focused on getting what he wanted. Nathan simply looked grim. Both were very easily recognizable. 

Chris looked at them a long moment, then signed the agreement. Nonie then signed and JD and Josiah witnessed it as they had the agreement between Chris and Vin. 

*******

The next day 

*******

Chris Larabee pulled his Dodge Ram into the yard of Nettie Wells' small ranch. 

He'd called his house to tell Vin that he and Josiah were going by the Wells ranch before coming home to talk to the old woman about letting Nonie and Vin see Casey and that he might be quite late getting in. He'd hesitated a moment before asking how things were at the ranch. 

Vin had chuckled and told him that everything was fine. He had finished tending the horses and Nonie was fixing supper. 

Chris had hesitated then asked if Nonie could cook. Vin had laughed again then said he really didn't know, they usually bought ready cooked meals, but he guessed they'd find out. 

Chris pulled his thoughts back from what condition he might find his kitchen in when he got home, as Nettie Wells stepped out on her front porch to greet them. 

He and Josiah had barely gotten on the porch when a small figure came barreling out the screen door, charging up to Josiah and hitting him on his thigh with small fists. 

"Where's my Nonie? What'd you do with my Nonie? Where's my Vin? I want my Nonie! I want my Vin!" Casey demanded in her shrill voice. 

Nettie shook her head as she moved to pick the child up, pulling her away from Josiah and settling her on her hip. "Casey! Stop that!" she ordered but her voice was gentle rather than harsh. 

Casey quit struggling and let herself be held but she scowled at the two men from the safety of her grandmother's arms. 

Nettie shook her head, "She keeps asking for those two. Don't hardly seem to remember me. Does recognize her mama's pictures though and some of her toys that she had before she was took." 

"It'll just take time for her to get used to you again," Josiah assured her. 

"Well, I really didn't get to see her as much as I'd have liked. My Cathy was real independent. Insisted on living on her own. Moved into Denver to be close to college. I only got to see Casey on the weekends. Can't really blame her for not remembering me much." 

Chris and Josiah exchanged looks then Chris said, "The reason that we're here, ma'am is to ask if you'd be willing to allow Nonie and Vin to see Casey." 

Casey's face lit up. "Please? Can I see Nonie? Please, grandma? Can I see Nonie and Vin?" 

Nettie sighed, "I don't know... let's go inside and talk about it." 

She stood Casey down and took her hand to lead her inside. 

Josiah caught the door and held it for the others before following them in. 

Inside Nettie led them into an old fashioned parlor and indicated that they should sit on the sofa. 

After offering to get them something to drink and being declined, she sat down in a nearby platform rocker and allowed Casey to climb up onto her lap, chiding her gently. "This is grown up talk. If you want to stay and listen, you be quiet now. None of your endless chattering. Understood?" 

"Yes, ma'am," Casey answered as she snuggled close to her grandmother. She did pout a little, but she did it quietly. 

"You said that she keeps asking about Nonie?" 

"Woke me up last night, crying and calling for Nonie. Reckon she had a nightmare. Wouldn't go back to sleep for the longest. Kept calling for Nonie and then Vin." 

Josiah nodded, "According to Vin it was Nonie that untied Casey and carried her out from where the kidnappers had her. Nonie seems to be very attached to Casey just as Casey appears to be attached to him." 

"That may be... but I'm just not sure that I want that type of person around my granddaughter." 

Chris spoke up, "Exactly what do you mean by that type of person?" 

"Well," she had the grace to look somewhat abash, "I'm told that Nonie is a boy, but he was dressed as a girl..." she trailed off. "I'm just not sure what kind of an influence that he'd have on Casey." 

"I doubt that a supervised visit would allow him to influence her any more than he already has in the last eleven months. He and Vin obviously took good care of her. Unlike most street kids, she showed no signs of malnutrition or abuse," Chris told her. 

"A am grateful that they took care of her, but I can't help thinking, that if they hadn't taken her..." 

"...she might have been home sooner?" Josiah finished it for her. 

She nodded. 

Chris shook his head. "According to Vin, and I see no reason for him to lie, Casey was bound and gagged when they first saw her and one of the men with her was fondling her... had his hand under her dress and was rubbing himself. That was why they decided they had to get her away from the men." 

"Dear God!" Nettie gasped and hugged Casey closer. 

Chris plowed on, "Mrs. Wells, Nonie has agreed to give us a detailed description of the third man in your granddaughter's kidnapping in exchange for my asking you for this visit, give it to us even if you refuse the visit. Your daughter's kidnappers are not the only criminals that Nonie has seen. Stephen Travis' killers knocked Nonie down when they were fleeing the crime scene. Nonie saw them, but he's afraid of something, of someone and he doesn't trust us enough yet to give us a description of them. We think that giving him this supervised visit with Casey may go a long way towards showing him that we can be trusted, that we are willing to give in order to get." 

Nettie hesitated. 

"Gramma?" Casey asked hesitantly. "Please. Nonie loves me... Vin loves me. I want to see them, please, Gramma?" 

Nettie closed her eyes. "All right, but not here." 

Chris grinned. "The agreement I made with Nonie specified that the meeting would take place at my ranch, with me and Josiah in attendance as well as you, Casey, Vin and Nonie. Is that acceptable?" 

"I... yes, that's acceptable? When?" 

"Nonie picked Saturday week. He said that, that would give us time to arrange it and give you and Casey time enough to have gotten reacquainted. Then he could see how you relate to each other, if you're getting along, if Casey's happy with you and such." 

Nettie gave him a thoughtful look. "If he made that decision himself, he sounds like a smart kid. Why would a smart boy dress as a girl?" 

"Maybe because he is smart and the man who is after him is looking for a boy... and wouldn't think of looking for a girl," Josiah suggested.

*******

When Chris got home after his visit to the Wells ranch, he parked in the front yard, as usual, and let himself in the front door, as usual, and trudged down the hall passed the dining room to the kitchen, as usual. Then he stopped dead in his kitchen doorway and stood staring at the scene in front of him. 

Every burner on the stove had a pot of something sitting on it. Both of the wall ovens were on and he could see pans in them. Every surface in the kitchen was covered with pots, pans and dishes. The double sink was full, dishes in soapy water in one side, clean dishes stacked in the other... and they were *clean*. 

Sarah's fine stainless steel cookware that hadn't gleamed since she had been killed five years before sparkled at him, as Nonie ran the sprayer over them to rinse them and stacked them in the dish-drainer. 

Nonie, dressed in a long green corduroy skirt with a white blouse, the sleeves rolled up over his elbows, stood in front of the sink, barefoot. His hair was tied back with a scrap of green velvet ribbon, and one of Chris' large bath towels was pinned around his neck and pinned together in the back at his waist as an apron. He was scrubbing away at the smallest of the fry pans that went with the set, the one that Chris used every day and had never been able to get the outside of clean. 

Chris could clearly see that a good half of the stains he had never been able to get off were already gone. He looked over at Vin who was sitting at the table, his feet propped up watching Nonie scrub at the pot with a bemused look on his face. 

"What's going on?" Chris asked. 

"Told him you was stopping at Casey's gramma's to ask about the visit. Went back out to cut the grass in the side yard an' when I got through an' come back in, he had ever one of the burner's goin', both ovens on and was cleanin' ever thing in sight. Think maybe he's a mite nervous. I 'member one a'my foster mom's used ta get like this when she was nervous." 

"I most certainly am not nervous!" Nonie stopped scrubbing at the fry pan's bottom long enough to straighten, turn and glare at Vin. "This kitchen was simply in abominable condition!" 

"Uh-huh... and just who are ya plannin' on eatin' two roasts, a turkey, dressing cornbread, biscuits, green bean casserole, corn on the cob, creamed potatoes and sweet potato pie? Cause I know that *you* don't eat hardly anything when yer nervous." 

"I am *not* nervous," Nonie stated again, imperiously tossing his head and turning back to the sink. 

Chris started to say something, but Vin put a finger to his lips to indicate that he should remain quiet. 

Seeing the amusement sparkling in the blue eyes Chris shrugged and sat down at the table without saying anything. 

Vin started counting silently, holding up his fingers one by one as he did so. He only had four fingers unfolded, when Nonie demanded, "Well? What did she say?" 

Chris turned to look at him, "What'd who say?" he asked innocently. 

Nonie spun around, slinging water from his dripping hands as he planted them on his hips. "You know very well who! Mrs. Wells! Casey's grandmother! Do I get to see Casey or not?" 

Seeing the very real anxiety in his face, Chris couldn't tease him anymore, "Yes. Saturday week like you suggested. Ten o'clock in the morning." 

Suddenly Chris found himself receiving a very damp hug as Nonie grinned and threw his arms around Chris, saying, "Thank you, thank you so much." 

Then he was released, and Nonie was back at the sink scrubbing away at the pan again, muttering to himself. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, what am I going to do with all this food?" 

"Don't worry about it. We'll have supper. I'll take some to work for lunch tomorrow and I'll invite the guys out tomorrow night to finish it up." 

Nonie smiled at him. 

The next morning, when he got up to go to work there was a sketchpad lying on the kitchen table, page after page of detailed drawings of what Nonie had seen when they had discovered Casey, along with a neatly typed, detailed statement of exactly what he had seen. It was signed Anonymous. 

It would be inadmissible in court, but still a great help in identifying and capturing the third man. And there was always the possibility that Nonie might agree to testify, if they could only convince him to trust them. 

*******

Visiting Day 

*******

Although he had gotten used to Nonie sleeping late, Chris wasn't surprised to find Nonie up and in the kitchen before he got up on the morning that Nettie Wells was supposed to bring Casey to visit the teens. In the relatively short time since the teen had come to live with him, he had learned that when Nonie was anxious or nervous, even though he denied ever being so, he cooked and or cleaned. So, he wasn't at all surprised to find that breakfast was already cooked. Platters of scrambled eggs, fresh biscuits, bacon and sausage, a large bowl of grits, jars of apple jelly, strawberry jam, peach preserves and orange marmalade graced the table. Anticipating the bounty, he had told Josiah, JD, Buck and Nathan to be there for breakfast. He hoped they made it. He knew that even with Vin (the bottomless pit) to help him he'd never eat it all. 

The kitchen gleamed. Every pot, pan and dish was in its place and shone brightly. The floor and countertops looked like they had been polished. It hadn't looked this good since before Sarah had been killed. In fact the whole house looked like a professional cleaning crew had been through it. 

He raised an eyebrow at Vin, wondering if Nonie had slept at all the night before. 

Vin shrugged. _[Couple of hours, I think.]_

He heard Buck's old pickup, pull into the yard and with a relieved sigh, took out a stack of plates and put them at the end of the table, then got out the knives, forks and spoons to go with them. 

Nonie threw more bacon in the frying pan. 

*******

By ten o'clock when Nettie's old pickup pulled into the yard, Chris was ready to strangle Nonie. 

Nonie had changed clothes four times since breakfast, wiped every surface in the house down at least five times and taken three different cups of coffee that Chris had dared to sit down unfinished back to the kitchen, dumped them, washed the cups and put them up. Buck had taken to holding on to his cup even when it was empty, and JD had a permanently confused look on his face because his sodas kept disappearing. Josiah on the other hand just smiled and handed the prowling teen his cup or glass whenever Nonie paced too close to him. Nathan [Damn him!] had called to say he couldn't make it. He was having breakfast with Eban's daughter, Rain. 

Casey broke away from Nettie the minute she was let out of the pickup truck and ran towards the figure standing on the porch. "Nonie!" she screamed, holding up her arms to be picked up. 

Nonie abandoned any pretense of decorum and flew down the steps to meet her, catching her up and swinging her around while hugging her tightly. "Casey!" 

He settled Casey on his hip and walked towards the truck. "Are you all right? Is she taking good care of you? Are you happy?" 

He scowled at the old truck as he approached it. "Is there a car seat in that... vehicle?" he asked stretching to see around Nettie where she stood beside it. 

"Yes. Yes. Yes and Yes!" Casey answered happily. "And I love you, too!" she shouted wrapping her arms around Nonie's neck and giving him a big smacking kiss on the cheek. 

Nonie blushed but kissed Casey's cheek in turn. 

Vin who had strolled over towards the truck behind them, stepped around Nonie to hold his hand out to Nettie. "Nonie only fusses cause he loves her. Case knows that. I'm Vin Tanner." 

Nettie took his hand and shook it. "Nettie Wells. Pleased to meet you." 

Casey turned to look at Vin and reached for him. "Love Vin, too!" she declared. 

Vin reached out to take her and Nonie let him as he squared off with Nettie, the two sizing each other up. 

Nettie seized the offensive. "Do I meet with your approval, young man?" she demanded.

"Ah, you're one of those," Nonie said in a knowing voice. 

"One of those?" Nettie scowled at him. 

"One of those people who see the world in black and white. There are no gray areas... or red, or yellow or blue areas. There is only right and wrong. Although there may be a greater good, there is no lesser evil." 

"What's that the lesser evil of?" Nettie demanded, indicting the way that Nonie was dressed and made up. 

"Better a live girl, than a dead boy." 

"Why'd anyone want you dead? You're just a kid." 

He fixed her with a look, his eyes suddenly seeming very old. "I know things he doesn't want anyone to know... and I have something of his that will prove that what I know is truth. He will kill to get it back, kill me, kill the people that I care about." 

Vin had taken Casey away from the confrontation between Nonie and Nettie, carrying her to the corral to show her the horse that Chris was letting him ride. 

Nonie looked over at them. "She looks good. Seems happy. She'll be safe with you. He doesn't know that she exists. It's better if he never knows." 

He sighed and looked down. "It would be best if we had no more contact... at least until I decide what to do... about him... about all this." 

"She ain't going to understand that." 

His voice was sad when he said, "I'll explain it to her. She's a smart little girl. She understands about danger, about bad men, like the ones that took her... and she's used to minding me. She knows that I love her and when I say that something is necessary to keep her safe, it *is* necessary to keep her safe. She will accept it." 

"Can you accept it?" 

His expression hardened. "I can and will do whatever I feel is necessary to keep the people I love safe." He paused then added more softly, "I just have to decide what that is." 

Nettie reached out and laid a hand on his arm, "Take some advice from an old woman who's lived a long, hard life. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. It doesn't mean you're weak. Everybody needs a helping hand sometime. Larabee's a hard man... but he's a good one, too." 

He looked at her for a long moment saying nothing then pulled away and walked off towards where Vin was still standing with Casey at the corral fence. He took Casey from Vin and carried her to a nearby bench, sitting down with her on his lap. 

Vin followed him over and propped one foot up on the bench near Nonie leaning over to listen in on the conversation. 

Nettie couldn't hear what was being said but she could tell that Casey was upset by it. Finally the little girl flung her arms around Nonie's neck and hung on while Nonie rose and carried her back to Nettie. 

Without preamble, Nonie said, as he handed Casey back to Nettie. "She doesn't really understand why, but she does understand that she can't come back to see us until I believe it to be safe." He reached up to caress Casey's face, "And she does understand that it is *not* because we do not love her but because we *do* love her very much, that we must remain apart for now." 

He stepped away. "I have something for you. I'll get it while Vin says his goodbyes." He vanished into the house as Vin smiled at Casey and said, "We're gonna miss you little'un."

Casey reached for him and he took her for one last hug. "Miss Vin. Miss Nonie." 

"I know... but you know that Nonie only wants what's best for you. Wants you to be safe an' right now being safe means not being with us." 

Casey gave him a small, sad smile, nodding solemnly. "I know. You love me. Nonie loves me. I be good for Gramma, and you see me as soon as you can." She hugged him hard again. "Bye Vin." 

Nonie came back, carrying a sketchpad. He blushed and held out the sketchpad to Nettie. "These are sketches that I did of Casey while she was with us. I thought you might like to have them." 

Nettie took the book and flipped through it, smiling at the pictures of her granddaughter. "Thank you. I'd love to have them." 

"You're welcome." Nonie said then turned to Vin who was still holding Casey. Holding out his arms to Casey he said, "Do you have one more hug, for me?" 

"Yes!" Casey said enthusiastically threw herself at Nonie. 

Nonie caught her without the slightest difficulty and hugged her tightly as she carried her towards the truck. 

As Nonie secured Casey in her car seat, Chris and the others came over to say goodbye to Nettie. 

*******

Two weeks later 

*******

Chris stepped out of the barn door and looked towards the house. Nonie as he still insisted on being called, sat atop one of the dormers on the second floor, cross-legged, with a sketchpad on his lap. He looked precariously balanced, yet Chris knew he could sit there for hours. He'd seen him do it. In fact he'd been up there since noon this time and the sun would soon be setting. 

He still dressed as a girl. He still refused to cut his hair. They still didn't know his real name, or his exact age, only that that he claimed that he'd be seventeen exactly one month after Vin, to the day. He had so far refused to take his GED, saying that he would wait until Vin was ready, so that they could take it together. 

And he still hadn't given them a description of Stephen's killer. 

He had proven he could ride the first week at the ranch but when told that if he wanted to ride he would have to muck stalls and tend his own horse he had refused to set foot in a stirrup since. He cooked, quite well in fact, and cleaned furiously when nervous or worried. He also had nightmares. The first week at the ranch he'd woken the house screaming bloody murder, two or three times a night every night until, Vin had finally told Chris, that if anybody was going to get any sleep, he was going to have to sleep in the same bed with Nonie. Apparently the nightmares were the reason that they had shared a bed in the beginning of their friendship. 

Chris reminded them of the edict against sex between them. 

Vin countered with either he trusted them not to have sex or he got woke up, two or three times a night every night for the next year and a half. 

Chris suggested therapy. 

Nonie flatly refused. 

After the second week, Chris gave up, reminded them one more time that they weren't to have sex and let Vin move into Nonie's room. He had no idea if they were keeping their promise. Vin swore they were, and Chris wanted to believe him. 

Vin had been as easy to get along with as Nonie was hard. He fit right in, pitching in with the ranch work, studying with Nonie for his GED like he had promised, always ready with a helping hand. He seemed to know what Chris was thinking. Hell, he seemed to know what Nonie was thinking and acted as a buffer between them. 

Chris figured that if it had been just him and Nonie, he would have strangled the kid by now. He sighed taking one last look at the figure perched on the dormer before turning back into the barn to finish the chores and found himself face to face with Vin. 

"He ain't lazy. He just ain't used to this kind of work." 

"I never said he was lazy." 

"You think it. Like Buck thinks that cause he dresses like a girl, he's some kinda freak." 

"Buck's never said that." 

"He don't have to. Everything he does 'round Nonie says it for him." Vin looked back towards the house then swore softly. Throwing down the pitchfork he was holding he headed for the house. 

"Vin?" Chris called. 

"He's cryin'," Vin threw back over his shoulder and kept walking. 

Chris picked up the pitchfork, knowing that Vin wouldn't be back to help finish the chores. When Nonie was upset about something, he was Vin's first priority. Vin dropped everything and went to see about him. That had become clear from day one. 

Later that evening, after he and Vin had eaten supper with Nonie nowhere in sight, Chris settled on the coach to watch an old war movie that had long been a favorite of his. Vin had uncharacteristically disappeared up the stairs and Chris could only assume that Nonie was still upset, and Vin had gone up to comfort him. 

So, he was surprised when Nonie appeared, silently as a ghost as the end of the movie neared and sat down on the floor at the end of the coach, near where Chris' head rested on the couch arm. 

After a moment, Nonie asked, "Have you seen this movie before?" 

"Several times. It's a favorite." 

"I bet you get all misty-eyed at the ending where the hero sacrifices himself for his buddy, dying to save his life." 

Chris didn't answer for a moment trying to figure out what to say. He finally decided that the truth was the best answer, especially since it would confirm, Nonie's guess. "As a matter of fact I do. It's a noble act. Heroic." 

"That's exactly what step-father number two used to say. He loved this movie." 

"Step-father number two? How many step-fathers have you had?" 

"Too many." Nonie flatly, then after considering for a moment added, "at least one too many, possibly two too many." 

He fell silent and Chris honestly had no idea what to say to fill that silence. 

After several minutes Nonie went on. "I used to tell him that the hero wasn't noble or heroic, only stupid. He said I didn't understand." 

"...and did you understand?" 

"No." 

"Do you understand now." 

"No... but I'm not so sure that the hero's stupid either." 

He fell silent again watching the movie for several minutes. Then he said, "He used to say, that is, step-father number two used to say, 'Everybody dies. Sooner or later, one way or another, everybody dies. The only choice you get is, do you die for something or do you just die. Most people just die. But he," Nonie pointed to the hero perishing on the screen, "chose to die for something." 

Chris found himself sitting up and sliding down to sit beside Nonie on the floor. "A lot of people make that choice," he said quietly. 

Nonie turned to look at him, for the first time since he'd sat down. "I'm not sure that I have the courage to." Tears ran unchecked down his face. 

Without even thinking about it, Chris reached out to gather the boy into his arms, pulling him onto his lap and rocking him as he wept. 

Glancing up he saw Vin, standing in the open doorway watching them, but the other teen made no move to interfere. He stayed where he was and let Chris be the one to comfort Nonie this time. 

Chris stoked the silky hair, running his fingers through the waves. "You aren't alone, and we'll do everything we can to keep you safe. Not just me but all of team seven. I know you don't trust the others, but you can. I swear you can. Buck can be an asshole but he's a good man and he'd never hurt you or let anyone else hurt you. Josiah thinks you're something special and JD, he, well, he's young and eager to get Stephen's killer. It's the first time he's had to face losing a friend on the line. Nathan," he couldn't help chuckling softly, "it would really help, if you could make his handcuffs reappear. He still hasn't found them. But even if you don't he'd never let a kid get hurt if he could prevent it, any kid." 

He continued to hold the boy, rocking him until he had cried himself out and his breathing even out. 

When he knew Nonie was asleep, he looked up at Vin in the doorway, silently asking him to help him up. 

Vin came and helped him stand up still holding Nonie. Once he got his balance, he carried the boy up the stairs and tucked him into bed. 

Vin immediately lay down beside Nonie. He looked up at Chris. _[You did good, Cowboy.]_

_[I hope it was good enough.]_ Chris stood a moment longer looking down at them then walked out, closing the door behind him. 

He stood a long moment leaning back against the closed door as a slow certainty seeped through him. For the first time he really believed, that Nonie truly thought he would be killed, if he came forwards to identify Stephen's killer. Always before he had held a sliver of doubt that Nonie really knew something that could get him killed, something other than what Stephen Travis' killer looked like. 

The earlier conversation echoed in his mind. 

_'How many step-fathers have you had?'_

_'Too many. At least one too many... maybe two too many.'_

_'At least one too many.'_

A shiver went through him. _[One too many step-fathers. One too many because one wanted him dead? Which one? And how do I find him?]_

Vin was up and around, when Chris got up to do chores before work. He gave Chris a knowing look and told him that he could do the chores alone if he wanted to head into the office. 

Chris gave him a long look back then nodded. 

Nonie was still deeply asleep when Chris headed for the office at five-thirty in the morning. Much as he hated to do it, as soon as he hit the city limits, he rang JD's cell phone. When the computer expert answered he said, "It's Chris. I need you to come on in. I may have something." 

"On Stephen's killer?" 

"Not directly. On Nonie. A clue to who might be after him." 

"Who?" JD demanded, suddenly wide-awake. 

"One of his step-fathers. Grab a shower and some breakfast and head on in. That'll give me time to have the search parameters ready for you when you get there." 

By the time JD arrived at the office, Chris had a short list of search parameters for him. 

JD looked down at it. "This isn't much to go on, Chris. A criminal, probably violent, with a fifteen year old step-son... as of a year ago... just starting to get into the gun running business." 

"Nonie wouldn't be so scared if the man wasn't a major player, maybe into drugs or something along that line a year ago. Start with the DEA database and the FBI one. Cross-reference it with new players in our database, anyone that has gotten into gun running in the last two years. Check for anyone that married between one and two years ago. Eliminate anyone whose new bride didn't have a male child. Bring me the files on anyone that had a male step-child..." he paused then said, "Nonie claims he's almost seventeen, which would have made him almost sixteen a year ago, but just to be on the safe side, search for anyone with a male step-child between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Use all the computers you need." 

When the others came in at eight, JD had searches running on everyone's computer except Chris and Nathan's. 

"We got something, Old Dog?" Buck propped his hip on Chris' desk as he asked the question.

Chris leaned back in his chair, "Maybe." 

"About Stephen?" 

"Not directly." 

"What then?" Buck demanded his voice rising. 

"Nonie talked to me last night." 

"Damned kid talks all the time," Buck snapped. 

"Not to me he doesn't. Not one on one and sure as hell not about anything serious." 

"But last night he talked to you about something serious?" Josiah asked, his voice eager. 

Chris leaned forwards to talk look at Josiah as he said, "Not only that, but he came to me." 

He looked up at Buck, "I was watching that old war movie that I love, where the kid sacrifices himself for his buddy. Nonie came and sat down on the floor beside the couch, just before the climatic death scene and started talking to me. At first it was just to say that he bet I was one of those who got all misty-eyed over the hero's sacrifice. Then he said something about one of his stepfathers loving the movie too. He said he'd always thought that the hero was stupid to die for his friend, but his stepfather had said that 'everybody dies, sooner or later, one way or another, everybody dies and while most just die, a few choose to die for something, like the hero of the movie." 

Buck snorted, "Great! He thinks heroes are stupid. That's really good news." 

"No!" Chris snapped, standing to grab Buck's arm as the big man started to move away from the desk in disgust. "Listen to me! He said that he *used* to think that heroes were stupid. Now he's not so sure, but he's also not so sure that he has that kind of courage." 

"Yes!" Josiah shouted, pumping his fist in the air, "Hallelujah!" 

"Josiah, what are you so happy about? He still hasn't decided to give us the description," Nathan paused to look at Chris, "has he?" 

"No, not yet." 

"But he's thinking about it, brothers. He is seriously thinking about it. To say he doesn't know if he has that kind of courage is to say that he is seriously considering putting himself at risk." 

"That don't explain what JD is searching for," Buck said. 

"JD is looking for the man that Nonie believes intends to kill him slowly and painfully." 

"You know who it is?" 

"I don't have a name. If I did, we'd be looking at the files now." 

"So?" 

"I'm convinced it's one of Nonie's stepfathers. When he mentioned his stepfather last night he referred to him as stepfather number two. I naturally asked just how many stepfathers he had, and he replied and I quote, 'Too many. At least one too many... and maybe two too many.' Since he hit the streets about a year ago, according to what he said about the list being a year old, I figure that the 'one stepfather too many' is the stepfather he had a year ago. JD is searching for a known criminal who approximately a year ago had recently acquired a stepson around fifteen years old. He's cross-referencing it with criminals who have moved into the gun running business in the last two years because Nonie said that the man had just started running guns." 

"What good is finding him going to do?" Nathan asked. 

"Nonie needs something to bolster his courage, a reason to believe that we will do everything we can to protect him. If we find the man that is threatening him and show Nonie that we are willing to stand up against him to protect Nonie, then maybe he will find the courage to give us the description of Stephen's killer." 

"Jesus, it's a long shot," Buck said. 

"The only other thing we can do is to just sit and wait for Nonie to decide on his own. This way at least we're doing something," Chris said. 

"And most of the time when you must choose between doing nothing or doing something, doing something is the right choice," Josiah said solemnly. 

Buck and Nathan exchanged looks, then headed back to work. 

Nathan looked back at Chris and Josiah, as he sat down at his desk. "You're right. It certainly can't hurt to try and find the guy. Anybody that would scare a kid that bad...." he let it trail off. 

Chris and Josiah smiled at him. Josiah came and patted his shoulder before, saying. "I'm going to hit the streets, see what I can hear." 

*******

It was shortly after one o'clock. The computer search was still running. JD hadn't found anything that he thought was promising although the computer had been printing out files for him all morning. Josiah had just returned with lunch for every one and to announce that there still was nothing on the street about who had killed Stephen Travis or who had been behind it. 

Then Chris looked up to see Vin standing in the doorway with another boy. A guard from the lobby stood behind them. 

For a moment he didn't recognize the other boy, then his eyes widened as he realized that the boy was Nonie. His hair had been cut and he was neatly dressed in blue jeans and a western shirt that Chris recognized as belonging to Vin. 

Chris stood up and walked towards the boys. 

The guard gestured towards Vin, "Kid says they're your foster sons?" 

Chris nodded, "Thank you for escorting them up." 

The guard hesitated, but when Chris glared at him he retreated. 

Getting a closer look at Nonie, Chris could see that he was as pale as a ghost. Reaching out a hand to touch the boy's shoulder, he saw that Nonie was clutching a laptop computer tightly to his chest. 

"Nonie, are you all right?" He knelt in front of the boy, his eyes filled with concern. 

"Ez-ra," Nonie corrected him through chattering teeth. "M-my name is Ezra. Ezra P-Patrick S-Standish. My mother is Maude Anne Vanderbilt, Standish, von Halsen, Piedmont, Simpson, Eldritch, von Stryker." 

"von Stryker? As in Heimlich von Stryker?" Chris gasped. 

Ezra nodded, "She married him on June fourteenth, two thousand and one." 

Chris couldn't help the shock that showed on his face, "von Stryker is---" 

Ezra cut him off, "Filthy, stinking rich. Mother has made a lucrative career of marrying well and divorcing better. Sometimes a prospective husband's bank account, if large enough, can blind her to his, shall we call them, less than stellar character traits." 

"He's also suspected of drug dealing, running prostitution rings, gun running, murder for hire and a list of other crimes, longer than my arm," Chris informed him.

"The operative word is suspected. He has never been charged, let alone convicted." Ezra swayed, looking as if he might pass out. He suddenly thrust the computer into Chris' hands. "This is his." 

Chris passed it back to JD with barely a glance, "Nathan. I think we may need smelling salts here." 

Ezra pulled away from him, indignation clear on his face. "We do not! I refuse to swoon like some dainty debutante!" 

Buck started to open his mouth, but Ezra threw him a glare worthy of Chris and snarled. "Don't you even think it!" 

Buck took a quick step back, then caught Vin grinning at him, amusement sparking in his blue eyes. 

Josiah pushed passed Buck and grabbed a chair, bringing it around behind Ezra, "Have a seat son, and I'll get you a drink." 

He almost choked when Ezra sat and replied, "A double Scotch straight up would be deeply appreciated." The teen looked straight at Nathan Jackson when he added, "for my nerves." 

Josiah looked at Nathan. "A small whiskey wouldn't hurt him... but with water, not straight up," Nathan said.

Ezra rolled his eyes, but when Josiah returned with a small glass filled with pale golden liquid he took it. After taking a swallow, he groaned. "God, I hate watered down liquor!" 

"Be glad you're getting *any* liquor... and don't plan on making a habit of it," Chris snapped at him. 

Ezra rolled his eyes again, and looked up at Vin, "Lord, parents that give a damn are a pain," but he was smiling when he looked back at Chris, "and you do care, don't you? You truly, honestly care... and that makes all the difference." 

"All the difference in the world," Vin agreed. Then he stepped around Ez, holding out a sketchpad to Chris. "Ez done these." 

"The two loose ones are the men that knocked me down that day. The others I did while at von Stryker's. I found it interesting that one of those men has been at my stepfather's house." 

Chris took the sketchpad and pulled the two loose pages out. He glanced up sharply at the boys. "Are you sure about this?" he demanded. "These men are cops!" 

Ezra shrank back from the anger in Chris' voice. 

Vin immediately moved closer and put an arm around Ezra's shoulder. 

Ezra leaned into him for a moment, then straightened. "I know. That was one of the reasons that I was hesitant to give you the description." His voice turned bitter, "I knew you wouldn't believe me. The thin blue line and all that crap, like cops can't be on the take. Those two spend plenty of time in the district. Harassing the homeless, rousting hookers for freebies, collecting payoffs from drug dealers to look the other way...." 

He squared his shoulders and thrust his jaw out defiantly. "You wanted to know who killed your friend. Now you know. A couple of cops did it! You don't want to believe it? Fine! Let'm walk!" 

He glared at Chris. 

Vin added his glare to Ezra's. 

Chris rolled his eyes. They weren't really his, but they seemed to have somehow inherited the Larabee glare. 

"I didn't say that I don't believe you," he protested. "It just means that we're going to have to have more than just your unsupported word to get a conviction... and we're going to have to be real careful who we let in on what we're doing." He paused to call over to JD, "What have you got on von Stryker?" 

"Plenty. I'm printing it," JD replied. 

"See if you can get into Denver PD records and pull everything you can on a couple of Vice cops, Anderson and Darby, while you're at it." 

Buck looked over at Chris, "Why?" 

Chris turned the sketches that Ezra had given him around so that they others could see. "Because Ezra says they're our shooters." 

"Shit!" Nathan swore. "That complicates things." 

"That it does," Josiah confirmed. 

Chris could only nod. It also meant that it was a good thing that he'd chosen to make the kids disappear from the system when he had. The only people who knew that the kids had been picked up were ATF agents and only the people in this room and Orrin Travis knew what had become of them. He silently thanked god that the two suspects were Denver PD. There wasn't any love lost between DPD and the ATF so it was unlikely that the two cops knew that the boys had been brought in, let alone that Ezra could ID them. 

He looked back at the boys. "Ezra," he began carefully, "I'm not questioning your word, but I have to be sure that you are absolutely certain that these are the men that ran past you that morning and knocked you down." 

"They are. I have an eidetic memory," Ezra told him. 

"Eide-- Eide what?" Buck asked. 

"Photographic," Josiah supplied. "He has a photographic memory." 

Nathan had picked up the sketchpad and was looking through it, "And he can draw. I recognize a bunch of these people." 

Buck took it from him and flipped through the rest of the pages. Suddenly he stopped and swore. "What the hell is this?" He tossed the sketchpad on the desk in front of Ezra. 

Ezra swallowed hard before answering. "Casey. The day we found her...." 

The sketch showed a little girl, bound and gagged. A man stood in front of her, his back to the artist, his left hand under the child's dress, his right somewhere in front of him. It didn't take much imagination to know what he was doing. The point of view was above and slightly to the left of the scene. 

Ezra reached out and flipped to the last page in the book. The man had turned around and was walking towards the artist. The little girl remained where she was, still bound and gagged, eyes wide with fright. The point of view on this one was straight ahead. The man's pants were open and his cock was hanging out in plain sight. Behind the man, Vin could be seen, creeping towards him, with a length of board in his hands. 

The picture was very detailed right down to the leering look on the man's face and the cold anger and determination on Vin's face. 

Josiah stepped up for a better look at the sketch. He looked at Ezra. "What was he seeing?" he asked. 

"Me." His voice was totally emotionless. "I had on my shortest skirt, high heels, silk stockings, and a bustier. My blouse was open to the waist and I was pretending to be stoned." 

Satisfaction entered his voice. "Bastard never knew what hit him. We grabbed Casey and ran." 

"She was so scared," Vin said softly. "When we got her untied and the gag off, she latched on to Ez and just hung on." 

"Where have you been keeping this stuff?" Chris asked. "You didn't have this sketchpad or computer with you when we picked you up." 

"You know we have money..." Vin said. 

"And I have a driver's license..." Ezra said. 

"How and where did you get a driver's license," Chris demanded. 

"I got it right here in Denver. It is not of course in the name of Ezra Standish." 

"What name is it in?" 

"Miss Patrice Elan St. Claire, age twenty." 

"How'd you pass the test?" 

"Quite easily actually, although I did have to remove the tester's hand from my knee twice during the actual driving test and threaten to report him the third time he reached for my knee," Ezra said smugly. 

"And there weren't any use in going to the trouble of getting a driver's license if we wasn't gonna get a vehicle, Was there?" Vin asked. 

"Don't you have to have a vehicle to take the test?" JD asked. 

"We... borrowed one." 

"Stole. They stole one," Nathan moaned. 

"We most certainly did not! To be guilty of stealing something, the law says you must have intended to permanently deprive the rightful owner of the item. We returned it within the day, in as good of condition as we found it." 

"We even put gas in it," Vin confirmed. 

"We have a van, a white panel van, not too old, not too new, very nondescript. There are a thousand exactly like it in the Denver area." 

"We used Ez's driving license for ID to rent a self-storage unit and parked the van there. Everything besides what we had on us when you brought us in was there," Vin told them. 

Chris looked down at the sketchpad, "Are there more of these?" 

Vin shrugged, "Ez sketches every day. It's sort of like his way of keeping a diary, only with pictures. Heck, he's filled three or four of these since we've been at your place." He frowned. "You *know* he draws...." 

Chris nodded, "I know, but I didn't realize how much he drew, and I figured he'd show me what he was drawing when he was ready." 

"That's why we're here now," Ezra said softly. "You didn't try to force me. You trusted me to do the right thing. Nobody... that is nobody but Vin, has ever trusted me before." 

"Chris," JD came to stand near the desk. "We might have a problem..." 

"What is it?" 

JD handed him a photo. "DEA has von Stryker under surveillance. This was taken yesterday." He handed a photo across to Chris. 

Chris looked at it a long moment, turning it over to read the note on the back, then turned it around so Ezra could see it. "Is that your mother?" 

Ezra blanched slightly then swore, "Dammit! I sent her the red code! She should have been gone when I was!" 

"Red code?" 

"I told you that mother marries for money. Well, in between marriages she runs various cons. She sometimes has me help her. We have always had a series of code words, a way of passing messages without anyone suspecting what they actually mean. The red code was a word that we used that meant that we were in imminent danger and to abort and disappear immediately. I called her the day I fled from von Stryker's house. She should have simply dropped whatever she was doing and vanished." 

"Wouldn't she have wanted to make sure that you were all right?" 

"She knows that I can take care of myself," Ezra said with a shrug. "She should have taken care of herself." 

"He mighta got to her before she could get away, Ez. Be holding her against her will," Vin suggested. He picked up the picture. "She sure don't look happy here." 

"Mother tends to get that sour look after a few months with any husband. Most of her marriages have lasted less than eighteen months. My father was the only man she remained married to until his death." 

"She must have loved him..." Josiah suggested. 

Ezra smiled. "I suppose she did. They eloped when she was sixteen. He was a poor boy and the family disapproved but she was already pregnant with me. They ran away and got married. Grandfather never forgave her for marrying beneath her not even when she gave him his only grandson. Father was killed in a car wreck when I was five." 

He reached out running his fingers over the picture of his mother, touching her face. "We have to get her away from him." 

"But how?" JD asked. 

"I could make contact, offer to trade the computer and--" he broke off and then finished with, "for her." 

"And what, Ezra?" Chris asked. "What else did you take from von Stryker?" 

Ezra looked down, around, anywhere but at Chris. 

"Money?" Chris asked, thinking about the money that they had found on Ezra when he had first been brought in. 

Ezra looked up at Vin, his eyes questioning. 

Vin squeezed his shoulder. "Think you ought to tell them, Ez." 

Ezra sighed then looked back at Chris and nodded, saying, "but I only took what was in the safe in his study." 

"And just how much money does Heimlich von Stryker keep in the safe in his study?" Chris asked. 

Ezra swallowed hard, looking up at Vin again before whispering, "A quarter million dollars." 

"What!" Buck yelped. 

"A quarter million dollars," Ezra repeated, his head coming up and his voice louder this time. 

"Sweet Jesus!" Josiah gasped. 

"And you were living on the streets?" Nathan asked. "Why didn't you get out of Denver?" 

"He was looking for me! I couldn't risk the airport or train station or bus terminal or anything, at least not until I could change my appearance enough to not be recognized. Then I met Vin and... and I couldn't reach Mother. She didn't answer at the safe house and I didn't dare go there until she did. I didn't know what to do and I was afraid to leave.... I was afraid something had happened to her, but I didn't know how to find out.... I was afraid to call his house. I knew he'd find me if I did.... Then we found Casey and had her to take care of.... I just didn't know what to do.... I didn't know of anybody that we could trust...." He looked up at Chris, "Until you found us." He looked down at his hands. "I had been so scared for so long...." 

Vin leaned over and wrapped his arms around Ezra. "It's gonna be all right, Ez. We'll get your ma out and everything will be all right." He looked up at Chris, his eyes pleading with him to make it so. 

Ezra looked up at Chris too, hope and trust in his eyes. 

Chris nodded, "We'll figure something out." 

Ezra straightened, "The best way is for me to call Mother's cell phone. If he is holding her against her will he will have it and answer, demanding that I return his computer and money, or Mother will suffer the consequences." 

"I can't put you at risk like that Ezra," Chris said. 

"I'm already at risk. I've been at risk since the day I _met_ him." 

"Maybe you should tell us exactly what happened the day that you ran away," Josiah suggested. 

Ezra looked around at them all, before finally nodding. He gripped Vin's hand tightly as he began. "It became apparent almost immediately after they returned from their honeymoon that my new stepfather was more interested in me than in Mother, if you know what I mean." 

"He wanted to have sex with you?" Josiah asked just to make sure that there was no misunderstanding. 

"Yes. At first he tried bribing me. He bought me expensive gifts and paid me a lot of attention, until I made it clear that I wasn't interested in being anything more than just his stepson. Then he became more aggressive. The day it happened, Mother had gone shopping. I came home from school and he had sent most of the servants out. He called me to his study. Everyone knew not to disturb him when he was in his study. No one was allowed in there unless he specifically ordered them to come in, not even his bodyguard." 

He stopped, looking down at his hands where his fingers were twined with Vin's, then went on. "He was sitting at his desk with his laptop open, apparently he'd been working with it. When I came in he stood up, folded the screen down on the computer and told me to shut the door. I hesitated. I'm not sure why, but I think that on some level, I knew what he was planning to do, that this was it. He came around the desk and closed the door himself, locking it. I started backing away, certain then of what was about to happen. He grabbed me and tried to kiss me. We struggled. He got in some good blows and had me pinned against his desk. I was bent forwards over the desk, the perfect position for his purposes. He was pulling down my pants when I grabbed the laptop and twisted, slamming him upside the head with it. He staggered back and I hit him again and again until he went down and stayed down. For a few minutes I just stood there, afraid I'd killed him and afraid I hadn't. Then I realized that I was still holding the laptop and opened it to look at the screen. I could tell he'd been working on some kind of spreadsheet program but that was all I could understand at that point. I closed the computer without logging off or turning it off. I figured it had to be password protected. I knew that I couldn't stay there and dig around in the computer and I didn't want to have to try and hack it to get back in." 

He stopped again, "What about the safe? How'd you find it?" 

"I knew he had one in there. Whenever he needed money he'd go to the study to get it and I knew I'd need money to get away. It wasn't hard to find... or all that hard to crack. Mother had been teaching me to open safes and it wasn't much of a safe considering what he had in it. I didn't expect to find as much money as I found. I just grabbed all I could, stuffed it into my shirt and let myself out the French doors onto the patio. From there I slipped up to my room, packed some things into my school backpack. I changed the password on the computer so that I could get back in, then slipped out and off the grounds, across the back yard to the woods and across them to the street on the far side of them. I walked several blocks before stopping to call a cab, then Mother. I gave Mother the code word and she gave me the code word that meant message received and will comply. The cab came and I had him take me into the city. I got out on a street corner and just walked away." 

Chris shook his head. The law had been after Heimlich von Stryker since before Chris and Buck had left Denver PD to join the ATF five years before. The DEA had been after him for years and a fifteen year old kid just walks off with his laptop computer containing enough evidence to put him away forever and a quarter million dollars of the man's money. 

"Chris," Buck said, "we're going to have to coordinate this with the DEA, it's their case. They've been after him for years and we haven't been able to get anything on him as far as gun running goes." 

"Who is heading up the team on his case, JD?" 

JD checked some files then said, "Somebody named Raphael Cordova de Martinez." 

Buck threw an amused look at Chris and Chris grinned back, "Raffy," they said in unison. 

"That makes this a lot easier," Chris said, the grin fading to a pleased smile. 

"Why?" Nathan asked. 

"Chris and Raffy go way back," Buck told them almost gleefully. "They were rival team leaders in the SEALs." 

"It was a friendly rivalry, Buck," Chris said. "He was a good friend." 

"Was?" It was Ezra who picked up on the past tense. 

"We've lost touch, no fault of his," Chris said. Then went on speaking directly to Ezra. "After my wife and son were killed, I, well, I started drinking pretty badly and I lost touch with a lot of people. Raphael was one of them." 

Ezra nodded slowly. He knew that Chris had had a wife and child. Their pictures were all over the house, but he had never asked about them and Chris had never offered any explanation for their absence. He only knew that they were dead because Vin had asked Chris about them and had told Ezra that Chris was a widower. 

"He's a good man. He won't let anything happen to you or your mother. He'll place the lives of the hostages over the glory of bringing von Stryker down." Chris looked back to the rest of team seven. "He also won't let any type rivalry between DEA and ATF get in the way of getting the job done. Neither will I. Understood?" 

When the others all nodded their agreement, he stood. "Good. Now, let's get to work. We're going to move this operation out to the ranch. Josiah, take Vin and Ezra, go to that storage facility, get their van and everything else that they have there---"

Ezra interrupted him. "The van is downstairs. We cleaned out the facility and terminated the rental agreement." 

Chris gave him a curt nod, "Fine. Then just take it and them out to the ranch. JD pack up everything that we have on von Stryker and everything else that you think you will need, surveillance equipment and such and get it out to the ranch. Copy his hard drive onto another computer then secure that one for evidence. Buck, check out bulletproof vests all around, including a pair of the smallest we have for the kids." 

Buck's eyes snapped open, "You can't mean to let them meet with von Stryker!" 

"I don't see that we have any choice. He knows that Ezra has his computer." 

"Unless we can make him believe that someone has Ezra *and* the computer," Josiah said thoughtfully. 

Chris gave Josiah a thoughtful look. "That's an idea. We'll think about it." Then he turned back to Buck, "Get a couple of bulletproof tarps, as well, and any extra weapons that you think we might need. Nathan, you know the drill, medical supplies, etc." 

The big medic nodded. 

"I'll call Martinez and clear our working from the ranch with Orrin. Everybody get there as quickly as you can." 

He stood and started out, then turned back. "One more thing. Only very good friends get away with calling Raphael Martinez, 'Raffy'. Understood?" 

The others all nodded. 

*******

Raphael Cordova de Martinez parked his black Dodge Ram next to the other black Dodge Ram in Chris Larabee's yard. He didn't have to think about it to know that the Ram was Chris'. They had shared similar tastes in vehicles even as far back as their first meeting. In fact their first meeting had occurred when the two equally drunk Navy SEAL Lieutenants had had a very loud misunderstanding over which of the matching Harley Davidson motorcycles parked in front of the base's Officer's Club belonged to which of them. The bikes had been absolutely identical, even the saddlebags had matched. 

Things had changed a bit though. His black Dodge Ram only had four wheels, a regular cab and a short bed. Chris' had the dual back wheels, four wheel drive, full crew-cab, and extra-long and wide bed with a full hauling package. It was obviously a work truck, made for doing anything that might need doing on a ranch. 

He glanced at the red 1957 Ford pickup parked beside Chris' Ram. That had to be Buck's. It had been Buck who had finally decided which bike was whose for them, demanding Chris' keys and trying it in first one then the other of the bikes. Fortunately the key only fit one of them. 

Beyond Buck's truck was a fairly new Ford Explorer in a deep green color. Past it sat an old Suburban that had seen better days. The last vehicle was a nondescript white panel van, that no one would ever give a second glance. 

When Chris had called him, asking him to meet him out at his ranch after work, stressing that it was important that he not mention the meeting to anyone he'd done a little checking. He knew that the Ford Explorer belonged to one of Chris' team, Nathan Jackson and the Suburban belonged to another member, Josiah Sanchez, but the van was a complete surprise. He had no idea who it could belong to. 

He wasn't surprised that Chris' team seemed to be gathered here. Chris had mentioned the magic words when he'd called: Heimlich von Stryker. 

He was still frowning at the van when Chris stepped out on the porch and called, "You planning on coming in or are you gonna stand there all night?" 

Raphael smiled and strode up to the porch mounting the steps two at a time. "Good to see you, also, amigo." 

He held out his hand and Chris took it in a firm grip. 

"You look much better than the last time that I saw you," he continued as he held Chris' hand for what might have been a minute too long. 

"I am much better," Chris confirmed and pulled him into a hug, his voice rough with old emotions as he added, in little more than a whisper, "Raffy." 

Raphael hugged back, again holding on for what could have been a moment too long as old emotions flooded through him, the long held memory of holding this man close in the still silence of the night, the memory of stolen moments, stolen touches and stolen kisses. 

Then Chris was pulling away and turning to lead him into the house, all business. "Come on. I've got people you need to meet." 

Introductions were made, then Raphael pointedly asked what Chris could possibly have found that he and his team hadn't, that would put von Stryker away for good. 

Chris grinned and went to the bottom of the stairs calling up then, "Vin! Showtime." 

He walked back into the room, stopping beside the doorway. 

A moment later a long-haired boy stepped through the door and came to stand beside Chris, but it was the slender boy that entered behind him that immediately captured Raphael's attention. 

The teen stood only about five foot six or seven, with dark, curly, auburn hair and startlingly green eyes. 

"Madre de Dios!" Raphael gasped, "von Stryker's stepson!" He looked at Chris, "It is, is it not?" 

Ezra stepped forwards and held out his hand, "Ezra P. Standish, sir, at your service." 

Raphael stepped forward and grasped the hand pumping it. "We've been looking for you for over a year! As has von Stryker. He has put a price on your head..." he paused a moment his eyes narrowing in calculation, "but he wants you alive.... You have something that he wants back." 

"Yes. I do," Ezra confirmed. 

Chris stepped up behind him laying a hand on his shoulder and guiding him to the couch while he motioned to Raphael to take a seat as well. "It's a long story Raphael." 

The boy that Raphael assumed was the Vin that Chris had called to, sat down beside Ezra and Ezra reached for his hand automatically. Raphael nodded slightly but made no comment. 

"Where have you been?" he asked Ezra. "We've been looking for you. Your stepfather has been looking for you. How did you manage to evade everyone for over a year?" 

Ezra smiled a rather smug smile. "I rather suspect that you were all looking for a boy... which is why I chose to become a girl. I know for a fact that some of stepfather's men walked right past me on several occasions. I don't know if you've figured it out or not, but between marriages Mother runs a variety of cons. She trained me to play whatever part she assigned me from the time I could walk and talk. I've played the darling daughter before when a son would have been an inconvenience, but a daughter would further her plans." 

By the time that Raphael left, well after midnight, they had a plan in place. He wasn't really happy with it, but it seemed the most straightforward way of establishing that the computer did indeed belong to von Stryker. 

It was up to him to sell it to his team and his AD. The AD might be the easiest sell. He was almost obsessed with getting von Stryker. 

While his team wouldn't be happy either, most of them would do what he decided on. It was his second in command, Inez Rocillos that had him worried. The idea of letting a teen-aged boy walk into such a dangerous situation wouldn't sit well with her at all, not even a boy as obviously intelligent, street smart and determined as the Standish boy was. 

She was going to take his head off and hand it to him. 

*******

Three days later they were ready to go. Raphael's team had been introduced to Chris' team. AD Orrin Travis of the ATF had met with AD Virgil Watson of the DEA. Both AD's had interviewed Ezra Standish, emerging from the interview looking somewhat shell-shocked, but agreeing to his playing his role in the sting, although they had insisted on stringent measures to protect him. 

Inez still wasn't happy, but after a discussion with Ezra, during in which he had suggested that her objections against his participating could be used to make a case against her participating, she had finally thrown up her hands and said that if he insisted on putting himself at risk and the powers that be agreed to allow it she couldn't stop him. 

Now it was showtime. 

Ezra, dressed in a short, red leather skirt, fishnet hose, high-heeled boots, a white silk blouse and a heavy, fringed, red leather, western-style jacket with his face made up like a china doll's and his short hair spiked and streaked with color, wearing sunglasses and several pairs of earrings, was in a phone booth in the district near the warehouse where Stephen Travis had been killed. 

Josiah Sanchez, dressed in ragged clothes and looking every inch the hard drinking ner-do-well was in the booth with him, his broad frame shielding Ezra from the street. 

He lay a gentle hand on the back of Ezra's neck. "Time to do it, son," he said quietly. To a passerby the hand could easily be seen as threatening. 

Ezra nodded and took a deep breath, licking his lips as he prepared to play the role of his life. His 'scene' as he thought of it was a short one. Just a few words then Josiah would take the phone and the sting would be on. 

He dialed his mother's cell phone number. They were counting on her not having changed it and on von Stryker, having the phone. 

*******

In Heimlich von Stryker's mansion, everything stopped as the cell phone that he kept nearby at all times began to ring. He looked over at his wife, whom he also kept close by at all times, except at night when she slept in a separate room under heavy guard. Her cursed son had cracked his safe at fifteen years old and eluded his search for more than a year. He wasn't taking any chances with her. 

"Answer it," he said shoving the phone into her hands. 

She hesitated but the phone kept ringing. She flipped it open and said, "Hello?" hoping against hope that it wasn't Ezra even though she knew that he was the only one with the number of the cell. 

"Blue skies." The code meant that he had a plan. "Give him the phone." 

She closed her eyes and breathed his name in a despairing moan, "Ezra, my darlin--" 

She was cut off as von Stryker grabbed the phone. 

"Where are you, you little bastard?" he snarled into the phone. 

A deep rumbling laugh answered him. "Well, now," a deep voice rumbled, "I heard tell ya'd pay well to get this pretty little boy back. Guess I heard right." 

"Who are you and what do you want?" 

"Who I am don't matter none. Ain't like I'll take a check. What I want is half a mill, cash, small bills, non-sequential serial numbers. Straight trade. I get the money. You get the kid." 

"The reward I offered was ten thousand dollars." 

"Uh-huh, but that was a year ago... inflation you know. Besides I bet you're even more interested in the computer I found him with than you are in him." Again there was that deep rumbling laugh but this time it was followed by a coughing fit. 

He thought a moment, his eyes going to his bodyguards. He could agree to anything, but that didn't mean he had to keep the deal. When he got his hands on the boy and the computer, he could kill the man that delivered them and make the boy tell him where his money was before having the satisfaction of killing the little bastard. 

"All right. Bring them to---" 

"No! I choose the meeting place... and you come alone. Just you, me and the boy," Josiah demanded. 

It was a calculated risk, that von Stryker might not bring Ezra's mother with him, but not too big of one. She hadn't been out of his sight in over a year according to the surveillance tapes and photos. There was also the fact that he would most likely plan to use her to force Ezra to tell him where the money was. 

Picking the place was the only thing that Josiah really wanted to get. Both teams knew perfectly well that von Stryker wouldn't come alone. At the very least he would bring a couple of bodyguards but knowing where the trade would take place would make it easier to cover Ezra. 

"Fine. When and where?" von Stryker demanded. 

Josiah gave him the address of an abandoned warehouse that the ATF had confiscated after a bust just a few weeks before. It was empty and they were already set up there. 

"In an hour," he added. 

"An hour's not much time to get that much cash." 

"Don't try shitting me. Men like you keep plenty of cash lying around. An hour or I take the kid and the computer to the cops." 

Heimlich von Stryker swore, but agreed. No way could he risk his computer falling into the hands of the cops. 

*******

Everything was set at the warehouse. 

Buck was waiting in the rafters, with a sniper rifle, as was Chanu Whitehorse, Raphael's team sniper. Between the two of them they could cover the entire open area of the warehouse. 

JD had surveillance cameras set up and would be in a van half a block away monitoring them along with Raphael's surveillance expert, Rafe Moseley. 

Chris, Raphael, Inez and Terry Greer, Raphael's undercover agent, would be inside the warehouse, concealed and waiting for von Stryker to arrive. 

Nathan would be with Josiah, driving the white van that belonged to the boys. 

Vin would be in the surveillance van with JD and Rafe Moseley. He didn't like it. He wanted to go into the warehouse with Josiah and Ezra, but the van was as close as Chris would let him get. He hadn't even wanted to let him be there at all, but both boys had been adamant that Vin had to be close by. 

Seeing how nervous Ezra got when Vin wasn't close by had convinced Chris and Raphael to let Vin stay in the van with JD and Rafe. They couldn't afford to have Ezra go to pieces in the middle of the operation. 

As soon as he hung up the phone Josiah spoke into his wire, "You get all that, JD?" 

"Loud and clear," JD replied through Josiah's earphone. 

Both Josiah and Ezra were wearing wires. When they went into the warehouse, they, along with Nathan, would all be wearing bulletproof vests as well as the wires. Josiah and Nathan's vests would be easy to conceal. 

Protecting Ezra hadn't been as easy until Terry had given them the red-leather skirt and jacket for him to wear. She had had the outfit special made to wear undercover and both the skirt and jacket were completely bulletproof, containing a double layer of the newest, lightest, most effective bulletproof material on the market concealed between the leather and the lining of the outfit. 

*******

Nathan parked the white van right on his mark on the warehouse floor. The position made it easy for both Buck and Chanu Whitehorse to cover them and would force von Stryker to park in the area that they wanted him, putting him and his men under Buck's and Chanu's guns. Nathan still wasn't really happy about Chris' decision to use Ezra in the sting, even with him and Josiah right there with the kid, even though Ezra had seemed to calm down and now acted as professional as any of the adults about the upcoming sting. 

Josiah checked the time and climbed out of the van, dragging Ezra with him by the arm just in case some of von Stryker's men might be watching. 

Ezra stumbled out of the van, clutching the laptop to his chest as if he were dazed or hurt. Inez and Terry had used makeup to make it appear that he had a major black eye and a busted lip. He stumbled, moving like he was bruised and battered as he and Josiah got into position. 

Josiah kept one hand on the back of his neck and Ezra stood on his mark with his head bowed and shoulders slumped, looking for all the world like a frightened child. 

JD did one last sound check on the wires then there was nothing to do but wait for von Stryker. 

He arrived ten minutes before the hour was up in a long black limo. 

Nathan emerged from the van to stand beside the open side door as the limo drew to a stop. Heimlich von Stryker stepped out, dragging Maude Standish with him by her arm. 

Ezra, reacting as he thought he ought, surged forwards crying out, "Mother!" only to be jerked back by the hand on his neck as Josiah also played his role. 

"Thought I said, come alone!" Josiah snarled at von Stryker. 

The drug dealer gave him a condescending look, "You're not alone. Besides, you certainly didn't actually think that 'a man like me' would come alone, did you?" He smiled evilly, "I thought the boy might like to see his mother one last time." 

He signaled and suddenly two more cars screeched into the warehouse, blocking the van. Armed men poured out of them, surrounding the two men and the boy beside the van. 

"Send the boy and the computer to me now!" 

"Now, wait just a minute," Josiah started to bluster. 

The men surrounding them cocked their guns. 

"Now!" von Stryker demanded again. 

Josiah felt Ezra shift slightly forwards and with a grimace, as if he were disgusted with himself for not realizing that von Stryker would bring plenty of help, he released his hold on Ezra's neck and let him stumble forwards. 

Ezra staggered slightly, making it look like Josiah had shoved him. The stagger took him out of a straight line between Josiah and von Stryker. He continued towards von Stryker, weaving slightly more to his right with every step until when he neared von Stryker he was far enough to von Stryker's left that the man had to turn half away from Maude to look at him. 

When von Stryker did, Maude made her move. She stepped towards him, gaining slack in the hold he had on her arm and pivoted clockwise on her left foot bringing her right foot around to strike at the back of his right knee, buckling it. 

At the same time she moved, Ezra moved to strike on the other side. Shifting his hold on the laptop computer he had been carrying he turned, pivoting on his right foot, turning counterclockwise and bringing the laptop around in a roundhouse swing hitting von Stryker in the back of the head as von Stryker's knee buckled and he swayed backwards. The momentum of Ezra's swing combined with the momentum of von Stryker's fall when the computer met his skull. The drug dealer went down like he'd been poleaxed. 

Maude didn't wait to see if Ezra had done his part. She knew he would. She just dove for the floor and slithered under the heavy bulletproof limo that they had arrived in, the instant she was free of von Stryker's grip on her arm. 

Ezra followed a split second later. 

The drug dealer's thugs had hesitated just an instant when Maude and Ezra made their moves because they were both too close to von Stryker for the men to get clear shots at them without hitting their boss. 

But with von Stryker down, and Maude and Ezra vanished under the limo, the men opened fire on the two men beside the van. 

Josiah and Nathan, dove for the cover of the van and grabbed their guns returning fire as Buck and Chanu began laying down cover fire from the rafters and Chris, Raphael, Inez and Terry popped up from their hiding places behind various crates and added their gunfire to the melee. 

The limo driver decided that discretion was the better part of valor and drove off, knocking one of the two cars that the other thugs had come in, out of his way as he fled the scene. 

Josiah saw him and thinking that Ezra and his mother no longer had any cover grabbed up one of the bulletproof tarps from the floor of the van and shouted, "Cover me!" 

Wrapping the tarp around himself, he charged through the hail of gunfire towards where he had last seen Ezra and his mother. 

Buck and Chanu, seeing Josiah rushing across the floor wrapped in the tarp, lay down a withering cover fire. 

Nathan, seeing that Josiah was covered, slammed the side door of the van shut, climbed over in the driver's seat and quickly gunned the motor, taking off after the limo. 

Ezra and Maude had not remained under the limo, though. They had slid under it, out the other side and found a nearby steel support beam to put between them and the main portion of the gunfire. They were standing up behind it, Maude's back to it and Ezra pressed tightly against her, the bulletproof jacket that Terry had given him to wear pulled up to cover as much of them as possible. 

Maude's arms were around his waist holding him tightly, as she wept with relief that they were all right and fear that they might not remain so. 

Ezra had just informed her that the jacket he was covering their heads with and the skirt that he was wearing were bulletproof when they were pressed even tighter to the support post as Josiah located them and wrapped his bulletproof tarp around all three of them and the support post. 

It was all over in a matter of minutes. 

More than a dozen of the thugs were down, half of them dead, the rest wounded. Heimlich von Stryker still lay unconscious where he had fallen when Ezra hit him with the laptop. The agents were rounding up the rest. 

JD and Rafe in the surveillance van had called for backup. JD was practically sitting on Vin trying to keep him from getting out of the van and going into the warehouse, when first the limo then Vin and Ezra's white van tore past them. 

Both surveillance experts swore. They would have loved to join the pursuit but knew perfectly well that if they left their station, especially with Vin in the van, their bosses would rip them a new one. 

As Vin swore and struggled to get away and in to where Ezra was, JD and Rafe swapped looks. 

"Being a pro means doing your job even when somebody else gets to do all the exciting stuff!" they said in unison. 

JD fixed Vin with a look, "Now, calm down. You'll see Ezra as soon as we get the all clear." 

Inside the warehouse, Josiah cocked his head as the guns fell silent. Moving the tarp enough that he could see around the support beam he grinned. It looked like the good guys had won, but he waited for the all clear. 

One by one all the ATF team checked in. Since it was a DEA operation each of member of team seven checked in with Martinez. 

Chris waited for Nathan to check and when he didn't sent a general call for information on his whereabouts. It was JD who informed them that Nathan was in hot pursuit of the limo. Rafe confirmed it to his boss. 

Since Nathan was no longer in the warehouse and everyone else had checked in Martinez gave the all clear. 

Josiah, Maude and Ezra emerged from behind the support beam, Josiah beaming stupidly at Maude. 

Ezra rolled his eyes muttering, "And another one bites the dust." Walking up to Chris he asked, "May I be dismissed to join Vin in the van?" 

Chris nodded, waving him away, "Sure... just stay there. Okay?" 

"Certainly, Mister Larabee," Ezra said, with a smile then as he walked away he turned and called, "By the way, should Mister Jackson, not return my van in the condition he found it, someone will be paying for it!" 

Chris shook his head and walked over to one of the police units so that he could listen in on the radio between the police cars backing Nathan up in the pursuit. It was a long twenty minutes before the final call came over the radio indicating that the chase had ended. 

A few minutes later, Nathan called Chris on his cell phone to tell him about the capture. "Chris! You won't believe who was in the car! The passenger was Detective Anderson! He came out shooting when the limo crashed... and he's dead, but the driver's in custody. We can tie Anderson directly to von Stryker!" 

A search of Anderson's apartment turned up paperwork that tied him and Darby to von Stryker and a tape recording of von Stryker ordering the hit on Stephen Travis. 

*******

EPILOGUE

Seventeen months later 

*******

"Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday dear Ezraaaaaaa!

Happy birthday to you!" 

The chorus was loud and enthusiastic, if not entirely tuneful, but Ezra Standish wasn't complaining. He was eighteen years old and life was good. 

He stood in front of the long, heavily laden table and blinked back tears, which he blamed entirely on the smoky birthday candles on his cake. Or possibly the smoke rising from the three, (Not one, not two but count them, three!) barbecue grills behind him, where Josiah Sanchez would soon be grilling a variety of meats and vegetables for the crowd. And Lord! What a crowd it was that had gathered to celebrate this momentous occasion. 

Vin stood beside him, his arm around Ezra's waist as the song ended and little Casey Wells shouted, "Make a wish!" from the other end of the table where she stood on her seat next to her grandmother. 

He blinked again, "Good Lord," he declared, "I have no idea what to wish for. I have everything I have ever wanted and more." 

Vin leaned close and whispered in his ear. 

Ezra blushed furiously and whispered back, nearly choking with embarrassment. "I don't think *that* is the kind of wish they mean. Besides, I'd better not *need* to wish for that as I have every intention of receiving it!" 

"Well, blow out the candles anyhow so we can get this show on the road!" Buck called from his seat half way down the table, beside Inez Rocillos, soon to be Mrs. Buck Wilmington, after over a year of hot pursuit by the infamous ladies' man. 

Laughing Ezra looked at Vin, "Help me, beloved?" 

"Always," Vin grinned back at him. 

Together they bent down and blew out all the candles. 

At the far end of the table, Chris sat with Raphael, their chairs pulled close together, Raffy's arm around his shoulders. 

Chris sighed and Raphael leaned closer. "What are you thinking about mi amigo?" 

"Catalysts, dominoes, and of all things snowballs." 

"You are strange, my love." 

Chris chuckled and didn't say anything, but he couldn't help the way his mind worked. 

Vin and Ezra had been the catalysts for a lot of things. Since the day they had come into his life things had seemed to fall into place like dominoes in a row, while conversely snowballing all out of control. 

At eighteen the two boys, who were standing at the other end of the table cutting birthday cake and passing it down the line, were now courtroom veterans having testified in more than one federal trial. 

The juries had loved them. Their courtroom image had been perfect. They had projected just the right combination of courage and vulnerability, of street savvy and naiveté. 

But they hadn't only been the catalyst that solved three federal crimes, they had also been the catalyst that had brought four couples together. Chris might not have ever renewed his acquaintance with Raphael, if they hadn't had to call in the DEA because von Stryker was their case, let alone become lovers with him again. Likewise Maude and Josiah might not have ever met if the case hadn't gone as it had. The same held true for Buck and Inez and JD and Terry Greer, who had met because of the case. And of course, Casey had been reunited with her grandmother because of them. 

He smiled, as Nathan and Rain stood to pass their gift up the table to Ezra. Make that five couples. Although Nathan had met Rain before, after Eban's murder, they had grown closer and were now married. 

And of course Vin and Ezra were still very much a couple. Tonight they would spend their first night in the apartment that he had built for them over the garage. He had never asked if they had kept their promise not be intimate until they were both eighteen. After everything that had happened, he had decided that he would just trust them... and truth be told he wouldn't be all that upset if they hadn't. At the very least they had been extremely discreet. 

In the fall his boys would be heading to college. Both were signed up for law enforcement courses. He couldn't help being grateful that they were going to college in Denver so that they could live at home... and they did think of the ranch at home. 

He leaned deeper into Raphael's side. 

Life was good. 

The End.


End file.
